The Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States. As it flows along the coast and then across the Atlantic Ocean, this powerful ocean current influences weather patterns and storms, and it carries heat from the tropics to higher latitudes as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. A new study now documents that over the past 20 years, the Gulf Stream has warmed faster than the global ocean
as a whole and has shifted towards the coast. The study relies on over 25,000 temperature and salinity profiles collected between 2001 and 2023. The Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States.
"One of the triumphs of this paper is that it provides observational confirmation of something that numerical simulations have predicted in a warming climate," Todd said. Just like the jet stream in the atmosphere, the Gulf Stream sways and oscillates within the ocean. With its average position getting closer to the coast, Todd pointed out that those large oscillations could more easily and suddenly influence coastal fisheries -- for example, water temperature could go from 12°C to 20°C in a very short period of time.
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New study finds that the Gulf Stream is warming and shifting closer to shoreThe Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States. As it flows along the coast and then across the Atlantic Ocean, this powerful ocean current influences weather patterns and storms, and it carries heat from the tropics to higher latitudes as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
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