LETTERS Influence of the Thermohaline Circulation on Projected Sea Level Rise

A zonally averaged three-basin ocean–atmosphere model is used to investigate mean steric sea level rise in global warming scenarios. It is shown that if the North Atlantic deep water formation stops due to global warming, steric sea level rise is much larger for the same global mean atmospheric temp...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Reto Knutti, Thomas, F. Stocker
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1999
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.502.3384
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/knutti00jc.pdf
Description
Summary:A zonally averaged three-basin ocean–atmosphere model is used to investigate mean steric sea level rise in global warming scenarios. It is shown that if the North Atlantic deep water formation stops due to global warming, steric sea level rise is much larger for the same global mean atmospheric temperature increase than if the thermohaline circulation remains near the present state. In the equilibrium, global mean steric sea level rise depends linearly on the global mean atmospheric temperature increase. The influence of different subgrid-scale ocean mixing parameterizations on steric sea level rise is investigated. 1.