Past sea level has varied by somewhat more than a hundred metres. This is primarily due to the growth and decay of ice sheets (mostly in the northern hemisphere) with water evaporated from the sea. The Mediterranean Basin's gradual growth as the Neotethys basin, begun in the Jurassic, did not suddenly affect ocean levels. While the Mediterranean was forming during the past 100 million years, the average ocean level was generally 200 metres above current levels. However, the largest known example of marine flooding was when the Atlantic breached the Strait of Gibraltar at the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis about 5.2
Sea level equation the sea surface constant for a specific deglaciation chronology and viscoelastic earth model. The SLE theory was then developed by other authors as Mitrovica & Peltier, Mitrovica et al. and Spada & Stocchi. In its simplest form, the SLE reads where formula_2 is the sea–level change, formula_3 is the sea surface variation as seen from Earth's center of mass, and formula_4 is vertical displacement. In a more explicit form the SLE can be written as follow: where formula_6 is colatitude and formula_7 is longitude, formula_8 is time, formula_9 and formula_10 are the densities of ice and water, respectively, formula_11 is