William Atkins
Thursday, 16 April 2009 19:27
Science -
Climate
Page 1 of 2
According to a U.S. study of the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current, a dramatic increase in the sea level of the northeast coast of the United States is possible by the end of the twenty-first century. Watch out Boston, New York City, and Washington D.C.
The results of this research were written up in the article “
Model projections of rapid sea-level rise on the northeast coast of the United States” within the journal
Nature Geoscience (2, 262-266 (2009), doi: 10.1038/ngeo462). It was available online beginning on March 15, 2009.
The authors of the study are Jianjun Yin (Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee), Michael E. Schlesinger (Climate Research Group, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana), and Ronald J. Stouffer (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton, New Jersey).
They state in the abstract to their paper,
“Human-induced climate change could cause global sea-level rise. Through the dynamic adjustment of the sea surface in response to a possible slowdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, a warming climate could also affect regional sea levels, especially in the North Atlantic region, leading to high vulnerability for low-lying Florida and western Europe.”
The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current both contribute to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
The AMOC transports warm, fresher surface waters from the Pacific Ocean through the South Atlantic Ocean to polar latitudes around Greenland, where it cools, evaporatives, and sinks to the ocean floor. The cooler waters then flow back southward where it does the cycle all over again.
The U.S. researchers analyzed data from climatic models for gradual regional changes and rapid dynamical changes in sea level on the northeastern coast of the United States for the 100 years of the twenty-first century.
Page two discusses specifics with regards to NYC, Boston, and D.C.
