Influence of the Thermohaline Circulation on Projected Sea Level Rise

Reto Knutti, Thomas F. Stocker
2000 Journal of Climate  
A zonally averaged three-basin ocean-atmosphere model is used to investigate mean steric sea level rise in global warming scenarios. It is shown that if the North Atlantic deep water formation stops due to global warming, steric sea level rise is much larger for the same global mean atmospheric temperature increase than if the thermohaline circulation remains near the present state. In the equilibrium, global mean steric sea level rise depends linearly on the global mean atmospheric temperature
more » ... increase. The influence of different subgridscale ocean mixing parameterizations on steric sea level rise is investigated.
doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2000)013<1997:iottco>2.0.co;2 fatcat:m4aamgme55fqlcur6sdkcnsvdm