During the last deglaciation (21-6 ka), the decay of ice sheets caused global mean sea level to rise by approximately 120 metres, including episodes of rapid sea-level rise of high amplitude, of about 20 metres in a few centuries (meltwater pulses - MWP), coupled with simultaneous abrupt environmental changes. This paper is a comprehensive synthesis of last deglacial events at Tahiti, based on interdisciplinary investigations of reef cores and data acquired in 2005 during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 310: ‘Tahiti Sea Level’. We reconstruct sea-level rise from 110-115 mbsl at 16 ka to 35 mbsl at 9 ka, with a special emphasis on the MWP-1A, which lasted approximately 300 years (from 14.65 or 14.58 to 14.35 ka) and was characterized by a median value of 17 m in magnitude, implying rates of approximately 50 mm/yr. Reef frameworks are comprised of corals, crustose coralline algae and microbialites and display a wide range of internal structures. They grew continuously at rates averaging 10 mm/yr. During the MWP-1A, shallow-water reef communities moved upslope of about 17 m in about 300 years, involving a lateral displacement at rates higher than 700 mm/yr. We reconstruct annual mean sea surface temperatures (SST) compared to present during key climate events of the last deglaciation. SST were 3.5 ± 2.8 °C or 2.4 ± 2.0 °C lower at 15.0 ka and ~2 °C lower between 15.3 and 14.3 ka during Heinrich Stadial 1, 0.6-1.6 °C lower during the Bølling–Allerød warming and 2.6–3.1 °C lower during the Younger Dryas cold reversal.
Camoin et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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