Meltwater Pulse 1a drowned fringing reefs around Tahiti 15 000 years ago

Abstract

Reconstruction of postglacial sea-level rise using reef cores recovered from Tahiti during IODP Expedition 310 showed that the first major acceleration, known as Meltwater Pulse 1a (MWP-1a), was a 12–22 m rise in 340 years starting at 14.65 ka BP. Although it was reported that the pulse did not drown Tahitian reefs, the subsequent discovery of a fringing reef at the base of several cores implies that its timing, magnitude and impact require revision. Here, we report facies and paleodepth data from this reef, revise sea level, and revisit reef response. We find its reef crest is dominated by surf-adapted corals to a depth of 2.5 m and show that it retreated upslope over an approximately 1000-year interval from 16 ka. Reef development then apparently ceased at 15 ka at −106 m and remained absent for approximately 600 years, before resuming at 14.4 ka further upslope at −93 m. This absence is consistent with reef drowning and requires that MWP-1a had a smaller magnitude of 13.8 ± 1.3 m, and may have started 300 years earlier than previously reported. It confirms MWP-1a was a global event, drowning reefs on Tahiti as well as those in other oceans.