Scottish Sea Levels

Reconstruction of past and future sea levels is important for many reasons. The sea level archives represented by coastal landforms allow past sea levels to be estimated at individual sites. Collectively, these sites provide a record of regional relative sea level and contribute to wider understanding of changes in the level of the land and of the volume of the ocean. The response of the coastal zone to sea level change in the past can also inform our decisions on the likely impacts of future rises in sea level in response to global warming.

Scotland has been a key location in the historical development of research into past sea levels. Scottish researchers have made major contributions to this branch of Earth Science. These pages provide a summary of those achievements and of the methodologies that have been developed to examine sea level change. There is now the prospect of a new era in sea level research, in which the very detailed studies being undertaken in Scotland may help improve understanding of both the movement of the Earth’s crust in the form of isostatic processes and the detailed changes of sea level at the coast. In a world of changing climates, such a prospect is timely.