Dynamic sea level changes following changes in the thermohaline circulation

By Anders Levermann, A. Griesel, Matthias Hofmann, M. Montoya, Stefan Rahmstorf. 2004

267 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using the coupled climate model CLIMBER-3α, we investigate changes in sea surface elevation due to a weakening of the thermohaline circulation (THC). In addition to a global sea level rise due to a warming of the deep sea, this leads to a regional dynamic sea level change which follows quasi-instantaneously any change in the ocean circulation. We show that the magnitude of this dynamic effect can locally reach up to ~1 m, depending on the initial THC strength. In some regions the rate of change can be up to 20–25 mm/yr. The emerging patterns are discussed with respect to the oceanic circulation changes. Most prominent is a south-north gradient reflecting the changes in geostrophic surface currents. Our results suggest that an analysis of observed sea level change patterns could be useful for monitoring the THC strength.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d22ef460a7d82815d48cf0af361e77a40d2e71b

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Citations in the corpus

Spatial Variability of Sea Level Rise in Twenty-First Century Projections (2010, background): “However, the slope of roughly 2 cm Sv 2 1 in transient climate projections (Yin et al. 2009) and climate variability simulations (Bingham and Hughes 2009) is signiﬁcantly smaller than that of 5 cm Sv 2 1 obtained by Levermann et al. (2005).”
Response of the global ocean to Greenland and Antarctic ice melting (2008, background): “Levermann et al. (2005) discussed the adjustment of regional and global sea level in response to a breakdown of the MOC in the Atlantic.”
Tipping elements and climate–economic shocks: Pathways toward integrated assessment (2016, background): “5 m [Gregory and Lowe, 2000; Levermann et al., 2005].”
Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise (2014, methodology): “In addition to the global mean projections used here, we apply a regional distribution that accounts for gravitational and rotational effects from changes in ice masses (22) and changes in ocean circulation (23).”
Past, Present, and Future Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (2012, background): “That the circulation might have more than one stable state has been known since Stommel’s (1961) paper (see also Longworth et al. 2005), and potentially this could allow rapid switching between ocean circulation states under external forcing (see the “How will the AMOC change over the next few…”