| Abstract: Recent studies by Sturges and
collaborators suggest a simple, but powerful, technique to estimate
climatic changes in the transport of the Gulf Stream from the difference
between the oceanic sea level calculated with a simple wind-driven
Rossby wave model and the observed coastal sea level. The
hypothesis behind this technique is tested, using 40 years of data (1950
to 1989) obtained from a three-dimensional Atlantic Ocean model forced
by observed surface data. The analysis shows that variations in
sea level difference between the ocean and the coast are indeed coherent
with variations of the Gulf Stream transport for periods shorter than 1
year or longer than 4-5 years. The results obtained from the
three-dimensional model confirm the findings of the simple Rossby wave
model that decadal climatic changes in the Gulf Stream transport vary
considerably with latitude. |