Sea level and climate

This chapter gives an overview of the environmental changes to the European shelf and its marginal seas during the Late Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene. It first explains the regional tectonics of Europe. The age of the consolidation of the basement together with the plate tectonic setting serves as the main parameters determining coastal formation. Next, the chapter reviews the fluctuation of glacial and interglacial stadia as an effect of orbital parameters of the Earth around the Sun. In addition, it examines eustatic change during the Last Glacial Cycle (LGC). The chapter also describes the development of the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Atlantic shelf, based on numerical sea-level scenarios constrained by observational data. Finally, it explains the basics of the ECHO-G global climate model, together with an overview of Late Holocene changes in European climate with special attention to wind forces