Weakening and warming of the European Slope Current since  the late 1990s attributed to basin-scale density changes

Clark, Matthew; Marsh, Robert; Harle, James

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-18-549-2022

Articles | Volume 18, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-18-549-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-18-549-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 2

Research article

|

02 May 2022

Research article |

| 02 May 2022

Weakening and warming of the European Slope Current since the late 1990s attributed to basin-scale density changes

Matthew Clark, Robert Marsh, and James Harle

Data sets

NCEP Global Ocean Data Assimilation System (GODAS) at NOAA ESRL/PSD NOAA https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.godas.html

Model code and software

Code for "Weakening and warming of the European Slope Current since the late 1990s attributed to basin-scale density changes" Matthew Clark, Robert Marsh, and James Harle https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6415360

Short summary

The European Slope Current (SC) is a northward-flowing current running parallel to the UK coastline. It is forced by changes in the density gradient of the wider North Atlantic Ocean. As the North Atlantic has warmed since the late 1990s, these gradients have changed strength and moved, reducing the volume and speed of water feeding into the SC. The SC flows into the North Sea, where changes in the species distribution of some plankton and fish have been seen due to the warming inputs.