A 30-year reconstruction of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation shows no decline

Worthington, Emma L.; Moat, Ben I.; Smeed, David A.; Mecking, Jennifer V.; Marsh, Robert; McCarthy, Gerard D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-285-2021

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-285-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-285-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

Research article

|

15 Feb 2021

Research article |

| 15 Feb 2021

A 30-year reconstruction of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation shows no decline

Emma L. Worthington, Ben I. Moat, David A. Smeed, Jennifer V. Mecking, Robert Marsh, and Gerard D. McCarthy

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Feb 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 14 Aug 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'A 30-year reconstruction of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation shows no decline by Emma L. Worthington et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Oct 2020
- AC1: 'Response to comments by anonymous reviewer #1', Emma Worthington, 08 Dec 2020
RC2: 'review comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 03 Nov 2020
- AC2: 'Author response to anonymous reviewer #2', Emma Worthington, 08 Dec 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Emma Worthington on behalf of the Authors (09 Dec 2020) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (21 Dec 2020) by Katsuro Katsumata

Short summary

The RAPID array has observed the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) since 2004, but the AMOC was directly calculated only five times from 1957–2004. Here we create a statistical regression model from RAPID data, relating AMOC changes to density changes within the different water masses at 26° N, and apply it to historical hydrographic data. The resulting 1981–2016 record shows that the AMOC from 2008–2012 was its weakest since the mid-1980s, but it shows no overall decline.