NOAA Says Northwest Atlantic Waters May Get Warmer, Faster

COURTESY OF NOAA
Bottom temperature change among the four models.

BARNSTABLE – Climate change may be affecting waters off the coast of the Cape more quickly than previously thought.

A study conducted by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers suggests that ocean waters in the U.S. Northeast Shelf might warm twice as fast as expected and three times faster than the world average.

NOAA’s findings were based on the output of four global climate models of varying ocean and atmospheric resolution. The models were developed at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey.

“We looked at four GFDL models and compared their output to ocean observations in the region. The highest resolution GFDL model, CM2.6, matched the Northwest Atlantic circulation and water mass distribution most accurately,” said Vincent Saba, a NOAA fisheries scientist. “Prior climate change projections for the region may be far too conservative.”

According to NOAA, the Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than 99 percent of the global ocean over the last 10 years. Recent studies show the increased warming is due to the northerly shift in the Gulf Stream.

Changes in the distribution and species composition are already evident and the warming of 3 to 4 degrees Celsius, which is 5.4 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, which is predicted by the GFDL CM2.6 model, would likely cause more extreme effects on the ecosystem.

The study also found that the warming of the upper 1,000 feet of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean increases salinity due to a change in water mass distribution.

The study appears in the “Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans.”