Meltwater Pulse 1A
Sea level rises about 16 metres in under 500 years as ice sheets shed water catastrophically.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 340 years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Around 14,600 years ago, coral records from Barbados, Tahiti and the Sunda shelf register a rise of roughly 16 to 20 metres over three to five centuries — rates exceeding four metres per century, more than ten times the current rate. Which ice sheet supplied it is still argued, with Antarctica and North America both implicated. It is the strongest evidence available that ice sheet collapse can proceed far faster than gradual models suggest.