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Remote sensing linear trends of the Gulf Stream from 1993 to 2016

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Abstract

The Gulf Stream (GS) transports a massive amount of heat northward to high latitudes and releases sensible and latent heat to the atmosphere, playing an important role in the North Atlantic and European climate change. The change trends of the GS transport and pathway are still uncertain to date. Our analyses of altimeter observations from 1993 to 2016 indicate that the linear trends in surface maximum speed, transport, and latitudinal location of the GS are significant east of 61° W at the 95% level while they are small and not significant between 72° W and 61° W. The weakening trend of the GS during the period from 1993 to 2016 is accompanied with a southward-shifting path, which is associated with the decline of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and possibly reduction in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).

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Acknowledgments

This study is a contribution to the international IMBER project. The daily SSH and surface geostrophic current and its anomaly data were obtained from the Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellites Oceanographic (AVISO) data project (ftp://ftp.aviso.oceanobs.com/), and both the AVHRR satellite daily SST data and the blended (multi-satellite wind speed observations and wind directions from the NCEP Reanalysis 2) daily wind data were from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/). The monthly North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index data were downloaded from the website of the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.shtml).

Funding

This work was jointly supported by the State Key R&D project (2016YFA0601103) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41776015).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Coastal Ecology and Environmental Studies, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Wen-Zhou Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics (Second Institute of Oceanography, SOA), Hangzhou, China

    Wen-Zhou Zhang & Fei Chai

  3. College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Wen-Zhou Zhang

  4. School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA

    Fei Chai & Huijie Xue

  5. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Lie-Yauw Oey

Authors
  1. Wen-Zhou Zhang
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  2. Fei Chai
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  3. Huijie Xue
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  4. Lie-Yauw Oey
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Wen-Zhou Zhang or Fei Chai.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Tal Ezer

This article is part of the Topical Collection on the 11th International Workshop on Modeling the Ocean (IWMO), Wuxi, China, 17–20 June 2019

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Zhang, WZ., Chai, F., Xue, H. et al. Remote sensing linear trends of the Gulf Stream from 1993 to 2016. Ocean Dynamics 70, 701–712 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-020-01356-6

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