Impacts of North Atlantic Long-Term Sea Level Variability on U.S. East Coast

In this work, the cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function analysis and the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method is used to compute the low frequency parts (T >
_~
5 years) in tide gauge, satellite altimetry and reconstructed sea level data. High spatio-temporal correlations are observed between tide gauge measurements North of Cape Hatteras (NCH) and other datasets in the subpolar and tropical regions in the North Atlantic Ocean. The altimeter and tide gauge data show significant different spatial pattern of correlation over north with that South of CH. In the last two decades, the weakening of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) might be related to the phase reversal of the correlations in the NCH as well as the strengthening of positive correlations in the tropical regions. Moreover, higher correlations observed near the tide gauges on the coasts of the NCH are presented by comparing the correlations in the time span of 2003-2012 with that in 1993-2002. Both the North Atlantic Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and ocean heat content variations, which could affect AMOC and Gulf Stream variations, are linked to the variations of the correlations.