Earth’s rotation impacted the mid-Holocene sea-level highstand
May 5, 2026
Abstract
At the end of the last deglaciation, sea level rose in some locations and fell in others. This well-documented Earth response to ice unloading and water loading, called glacio-isostatic adjustment, is geophysically well-described, but the spatio-temporal distribution of rise and fall observations is unclear. Here, we elucidate the Holocene sea-level highstand frequently observed in the far-field of the former ice sheets by analysing the specific feedback mechanism by which Earth’s rotation affects sea level. By assessing the role of this rotational feedback in four models simulating the glacio-isostatic adjustment processes, we identify the height of the highstand as rotationally induced or enhanced in the Southwest Atlantic, Northeast Pacific, and Northern Indian Ocean, and rotationally weakened or suppressed in the southern Indian Ocean and parts of Pacific Ocean. Holocene relative sea-level proxy data broadly confirm this spatial pattern. Thus, Earth’s rotation is a driving mechanism which modulates the impact of other concurrent glacio-isostatic adjustment processes and, hence, shapes the observed postglacial relative sea-level histories.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.Acknowledgements
We are grateful to W.R. Peltier for making available the detailed spatio-temporal evolution of ice sheets for models ICE-6G and ICE-7G on his personal home page, and to Anthony Purcell for providing ice sheet details for the ANU model. Our work benefited from the large RSL datasets compiled, updated, or amended in the last decade by the many authors listed in the database. BM acknowledges the IGCP sea-level programme and the PALSEA working group. We are grateful to Rita Chiara Taccone (INGV, Rome) for building the web application available at Zenodo. We thank Jerry Mitrovica and one anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments, which helped improve the manuscript. This study received no external funding. Open access publication supported by the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg Publication Fund.
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Melini, D., Spada, G. & Mauz, B. Earth’s rotation impacted the mid-Holocene sea-level highstand.
Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03565-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03565-1
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