The Post-Partisan Emporium

  By   Kenneth Richard   on   28. March 2024 Modern relative sea levels are near the lowest in the last 7,000 years. Two studies, independently published, identify Mid-Holocene sea levels in northern Norway (north of the Arctic circle) as 7 to 9 meters higher than today before declining to the present ( Balascio et al., 2024 ,   Nielsen et al., 2024 ). This region of the Arctic was warm enough to support human settlements and boat harbors during the Medieval Warm Period. As the climate deteriorated into the Little Ice Age cooling centuries after the Medieval warmth, the accompanying sea level fall led to abandoned residences, ships, and harbors. The seas had become to shallow to sail in. Image Source:  Balascio et al., 2024 Image Source:  Nielsen et al., 2024 It is sometimes assumed that these much higher Holocene relative sea levels are merely a function of tectonics, or post-glacial uplift. But sea levels in the tropics (for example the Malaysia-Thailand region), unaffected by ice-lo