Ice Age Melt Happened in Violent Pulses

For decades, the standard model of post-glacial sea level rise described a slow, smooth, continuous process spanning 30,000 to 50,000 years. That model has been progressively dismantled. The timeframe has been compressed to roughly 10,000 years - and within that window, the rate of rise was anything but gradual.

Average estimates place sea level recovery at around 15 metres per thousand years following the glacial maximum low of 20,000 years ago. However, shorter term data suggests bursts of up to 20 metres per thousand years, with some periods reaching four metres per century. The researcher suggests even that may be conservative.

What this means is that the melt was pulsed - driven by episodic, catastrophic events rather than steady warming. For any coastal civilisation existing during that window, the difference between a gradual rise and a pulsed one is the difference between adaptation and annihilation. That distinction matters enormously when discussing what may have been lost beneath the ocean.