On The Evolution of Sea Level Change

Fig. 1 From old sea level change records

It is generally thought that "thermal expansion was the main driver of global sea level rise for 75 - 100 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution" (Causes of Sea Level Rise: What the Science Tells Us).

A post at Dredd Blog recently took a trip back to that era via a software model that has a "wayback machine" module in it.

Stumbling over and then analyzing some ancient records may have led to a discovery that may also lead to some modification of the concepts of the evolution of Industrial Revolution caused sea level change (SLC), whether in the form of sea level rise (SLR) or sea level fall (SLF)  (The Evolution of Models - 18).

That Dredd Blog post points out that the year 1750 is associated with the beginning of "The Industrial Revolution."

The year 1750 + "75 - 100 years" is 1825 - 1850.

Contrary to current SLC science, the graph at Fig. 2 of the Dredd Blog post (Fig. 1 above in this post), indicates that sea level change was taking place circa 1774 at the ancient "tide gauge station" in Sweden.

The scientist Martin Ekman wrote about that tide gauge station in 1988 (The World's Longest Sea Level Record).

The year 1774 is only 24 years after the date that the Industrial Revolution is generally said to have begun.

That graph at Fig. 1 above may be a fingerprint telling us that the Greenland ice sheet was melting by circa 1774, because thermal expansion by definition does not cause SLF, it causes only SLR.

Surprisingly, what causes SLF where that tide gauge station was located in 1774, and what still causes SLF today, is gravity (The Gravity of Sea Level Change; cf Proof of Concept - 5 and Proof of Concept - 3).

The remaining scientific issue then, is: "what percentage of SLC did each dynamic (ice sheet melt and thermal expansion) play?"

Stay tuned.