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Climate and sea level change

September 24th, 2014

Climate and sea level change continues to be in the news and it inspired me to write a quick note on it. From a geological perspective there is no such thing as stable sea level. It is always changing; some of the changes in the past have been huge, exceeding 300 vertical feet. These changes are due to many factors, the most important being eccentricities in Earth’s orbit (Milankovitch cycles), ocean basin volume changes related to plate tectonics, and global volcanism. The recognition, characterization, and detailed age-dating of sea level changes in the geologic record have provided the biggest breakthrough in geology in the last 30 years. This knowledge has been worth billions of dollars to the oil business. I can hardly over-exaggerate its economic importance. A lot of the deepwater offshore drilling is predicated directly on this knowledge. I will try to explain why this is true in the future. If you look at the accompanying chart (I have limited it to the Cretaceous time period) you will see constantly fluctuating sea levels depicted. Blessings! Steve W

Climate and sea level change continues to be in the news and it inspired me to write a quick note on it. From a geological perspective there is no such thing as stable sea level. It is always changing; some of the changes in the past have been huge, exceeding 300 vertical feet. These changes are due to many factors, the most important being eccentricities in Earth’s orbit (Milankovitch cycles), ocean basin volume changes related to plate tectonics, and global volcanism. The recognition, characterization, and detailed age-dating of sea level changes in the geologic record have provided the biggest breakthrough in geology in the last 30 years. This knowledge has been worth billions of dollars to the oil business. I can hardly over-exaggerate its economic importance. A lot of the deepwater offshore drilling is predicated directly on this knowledge. I will try to explain why this is true in the future. If you look at the accompanying chart (I have limited it to the Cretaceous time period) you will see constantly fluctuating sea levels depicted. Blessings! Steve W
  • Evan Plante I find these posts fascinating, Steve.
    September 24 at 10:24am · Like
  • Tim White Dang, I wish I could use big words too.
    September 24 at 1:06pm · Edited · Like
  • Robert Lowry You wrote that a lot of the deepwater offshore drilling is predicated directly on this knowledge. I look forward to the explanation, to understand how a knowledge of water depth, especially AS A FUNCTION OF TIME, helps to find oil. What does it matter whether those fluctuations were millions of years ago or a few hundred or a few thousand years ago? What does that chart look like for the past several thousand years? Just call me Skeptical.
    September 24 at 5:45pm · Like
  • Steve Ray Webb Robert Lowry, Not real easy to explain in a mere paragraph or so but I will take it on in the next day or so in a separate post. But for now, yes, the time component is absolutely critical. If you want to read about the branch of geology known as Sequence Stratigraphy in Wikipedia it will take you forward a few steps on this subject. Blessings!
    September 24 at 7:29pm · Like
  • Tim White Is anyone interested in the dynamics of controlled imbalance in the proper pitching motion of a baseball?
    September 24 at 7:55pm · Like · 1
  • Steve Ray Webb Tim White, I, for one, would probably be interested in reading about baseball mechanics, but with respect to your comment about me using big words, I kind of see what you mean, but I actually went out of my way to use simple language. It is not easy to talk science without using scientific words.
    September 24 at 8:10pm · Like
  • Tim White Steve, I am just thankful you provided an avenue for me to pick on someone about something.
    September 24 at 8:16pm · Like · 1

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