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As the project progresses, key outputs from the programme will be collated here.
Scientific publications
Piecuch, C. G., & Beal, L. M. (2023). Robust Weakening of the Gulf Stream During the Past Four Decades Observed in the Florida Straits. Geophysical Research Letters, 50(18). https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL105170
Summary
The Gulf Stream is a major ocean current located off the East Coast of the United States. It carries a tremendous amount of seawater and along with it heat, carbon, and other ocean constituents. Because of this, the Gulf Stream plays an important role in weather and climate, influencing phenomena as seemingly unrelated as sea level along coastal Florida and temperature and precipitation over continental Europe. Given how important this ocean current is to science and society, scientists have tried to determine whether the Gulf Stream has undergone significant changes under global warming, but so far, they have not reached a firm conclusion. Here we report our effort to synthesize available Gulf Stream observations from the Florida Straits near Miami, and to assess whether and how the Gulf Stream transport there has changed since 1982. We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years, the first conclusive, unambiguous observational evidence that this ocean current has undergone significant change in the recent past. Future studies should try to identify the cause of this change.
Data sets
New observational data will be accessible when available at the British Oceanographic Data Centre
Raw float data are available from various sources: