What Forcing Mechanisms Affect the Co-variability of Interannual Sea Level Variations Between the Northeast and Southeast Coasts of the United States? ...

• Main Authors: Lee, Tong, Wang, Ou, Frederikse, Thomas, Ponte, Rui, Fenty, Ian, Fukumori, Ichiro, Hamlington, Ben
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: CNES 2023
• Subjects: Nantucket; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.24400/527896/a03-2023.3690; https://ostst.aviso.altimetry.fr/programs/abstracts-details.html?tx_ausyclsseminar_pi2[objAbstracte]=3690&cHash=X

Altimetry measurements suggest that interannual sea level variations between the Northeast and Southeast Coasts of the United States (U.S.) separated by Cape Hatteras are significantly less correlated than those within the respective sectors. This behavior is reproduced by the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) ocean state estimate. We investigate forcing mechanisms affecting the co-variability of interannual sea-level variations at Nantucket and Charleston, as two representative locations for the U.S. Northeast and Southeast Coasts, by using an adjoint sensitivity analysis of sea-level reconstruction and decomposition in ECCO’s framework. This method is more rigorous than correlation-based methods to determine causal mechanisms for a quantity of interest (interannual sea-level variations here) by wind stress and buoyancy forcing from different regions. Onshore wind stress north of Cape Hatteras and buoyancy forcing, especially that from the subpolar North Atlantic, both cause ...