Abstract

Sea Level Rise, History and Consequences includes a special emphasis on the evidence for historical sea level change; case studies are used to demonstrate the resulting consequences. A CD-ROM is included which contain tide gauge data and trends of relative sea level from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level. The material on the CD-ROM is either in the form of text files, or web sites that can be opened by widely available web-browsers.
Sea level is expected to rise as much as 60-100 centimeters over the next century due to greenhouse-induced global warming -- or at least that is what the some scientists predict. However, the concept of sea level is extremely complex, which makes the prediction of sea level rise anything but certain. The reviewers are in consensus in enthusiastically endorsing this comprehensive book and CD-ROM treatment.
This book will be a comprehensive review of the subject using the data themselves (on CD-ROM) to illustrate the principles involved, rather than detailed mathematical treatments. The book should be readily accessible to upper division and first-year graduate students in the environmental sciences, geography, geology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Four pages (up to 16 pages) of color in the printed text.
The book will have wide appeal. It will be read by geologists, geophysicists, climatologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, environmental scientists, geomorphologists, coastal engineers, and policy makers in all of these fields.
"...recommended reading for all researchers and students trying to understand the complexity of sea level change and its impacts."
--EOS, Transactions, AGU, Vol. 82, No. 34, 8/21/01
This is a welcome compilation of what is known about sea level, by the people who have done the definitive work."
--Walter Munk, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
"...a highly readable study of the subject which is likely to be quoted and referred to for quite some years."
--Rhodes W. Fairbridge, Columbia University
"This technical volume, by nine authors based in North America, reviews the history of sea level changes in the past 18,000 years, the methods by which those changes can be measured more or less precisely, the current difficulties of measuring any recent acceleration in the rates of sea level change and the consequences of rising sea levels. Each chapter is supported with several figures and tables and comprehensive bibliographies. The satisfactory index and the detailed table of contents makes it easy for the reader to go quickly to any matter of special importance. Readers of this book will know that when any predictions are made of future rises in sea level throughout the next century they should be subjected to two tests. First, do the assumptions on which the prediction is based, take account of all the complicating factors described in detail in this volume? Secondly, are those assumptions reasonable in the light of the known history of sea level changes in the last 5,000 years?"
--THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MARINE AND COASTAL LAW