| Summary: | Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters, 46(10), (2019): 5351-5360, doi:10.1029/2019GL083073. Monthly observations are used to study the relationship between the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) at 26° N and sea level (ζ) on the New England coast (northeastern United States) over nonseasonal timescales during 2004–2017. Variability in ζ is anticorrelated with AMOC on intraseasonal and interannual timescales. This anticorrelation reflects the stronger underlying antiphase relationship between ageostrophic Ekman‐related AMOC transports due to local zonal winds across 26° N and ζ changes arising from local wind and pressure forcing along the coast. These distinct local atmospheric variations across 26° N and along coastal New England are temporally correlated with one another on account of large‐scale atmospheric teleconnection patterns. Geostrophic AMOC contributions from the Gulf Stream through the Florida Straits and upper‐mid‐ocean transport across the basin are together uncorrelated with ζ. This interpretation contrasts with past studies that understood ζ and AMOC as being in geostrophic balance with one another. This work was supported by NSF awards OCE‐1558966, OCE‐1834739, and OCE‐1805029; NASA contract NNH16CT01C; and the J. Lamar Worzel Assistant Scientist Fund and the Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Helpful comments from Magdalena Andres and two anonymous reviewers are acknowledged. Tide‐gauge sea level data were provided by the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (www.psmsl.org). Observations of the overturning circulation were taken from the RAPID data download page (www.rapid.ac.uk/data.php). Time series of the North Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation were downloaded from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric ...
|
|---|