Hot off the press! New constraints on sea-level rise during meltwater pulse 1B from the Great Barrier Reef

Hi All, please find our new paper “Constraints on sea-level rise during meltwater pulse 1B from the Great Barrier Reef” that has now been published in Nature Communications at the following link. The paper is fully open access so please feel free to share.

Webster, J. M., Yokoyama, Y., Humblet, M., Braga, J. C., Esat, T., Fallon, S., and Bard, E., 2025, Constraints on sea-level rise during meltwater pulse 1B from the Great Barrier Reef: Nature Communications, v. 16, no. 1; 4698 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59858-0

Highlights from the paper include:

Relative sea-level rise during MWP-1B was moderate, with a maximum of 7.7–10.2 m at rates of 23–30 mm/yr, and was likely less.
The GBR data are consistent with other Pacific records (e.g. Tahiti), and does not support the Barbados reef record of MWP-1B as an abrupt step in global sea level, with a magnitude > 11 m.
Possible absence of a large MWP-1B may have implications for the resilience of ice-sheets during global warming over the same period.
The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) did not drown, showing continued shallow-water, high-energy reef growth and resilience through MWP-1B.
Reef drowning occurred later (~10 ka) likely due to a combination environmental stressors, not rapid sea-level rise alone.

The USYD press release can be found here

The research could have been achieved without the wonderful contributions from several GRG collaborators Yusuke Yokoyama (University of Tokyo), Marc Humblet (Nagoya University), Juan Carlos Braga (University of Granada), Tezer Esat, Stewart Fallon (Australian National University) and Edouard Bard (CEREGE, Aix-Marseille University).

My colleagues and I also published a companion article in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/will-surging-sea-levels-kill-the-great-barrier-reef-ancient-coral-fossils-may-hold-the-answer-257830

We hope you find this research interesting as this as it continues the story of how the Great Barrier Reef grew and died in response to global sea level, climate and environmental changes in the past.

And once again we thank the entire IODP 325 Expedition Science Party, ECORD Science Operator (ESO) support staff, the drilling team, and the captain and crew of the RV Greatship Maya for their outstanding work on initial offshore and onshore phases of the expedition.

After 15 years its really exciting that the IODP Exp. 325 cores continue to reveal their secrets about how the GBR recorded, and responded to major environmental changes in the past.

Cheers

Jody

#MarineScienceSydneyUni

Check out the media gallery below showing scences from IODP Exp. 325, as well as some interesting video animations showing 3D visualizations of the seafloor and some simple “bath tub” style flooding reconstructions at the study sites.

Media gallery: images and videos