Sea level rise has been accelerating along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, and now, a paper published in the February issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans confirms the cause: the Gulf Stream is slowing.
My colleague Michael Lemonick has an excellent post over at Climate Central explaining the science and the background in some detail. But for ImaGeo, I thought it would be valuable to add a visual perspective in the form of the visualization above.
Produced by a computer model, it shows in breathtaking detail the Gulf Stream meandering and looping from the Gulf of Mexico up the East Coast and across the North Atlantic towards Western Europe. It was produced as part of of a NASA project called ECCO2. The colors correspond to sea surface temperature, with the warmer temperatures of the current quite evident.
Looking at the visualization, you might be able to get a sense of how a slowing Gulf Stream may contribute to sea level rise along the East Coast. It’s northeasterly flow actually sucks water away from the land — and the effect isn’t really subtle. As Lemonick reports, it has kept sea level in the region up to a meter and a half lower than it would otherwise be.
But as the Gulf Stream slows — a predicted consequence of global warming — the effect is lessening, and sea level is now rising faster than in the past. For cities like New York, this could mean trouble over the coming decades, especially when storms like Superstorm Sandy pile a significant surge of water atop a higher ocean.