Originating at the tip of Florida, the Gulf Stream is a warm and swift Atlantic Ocean current that follows the eastern coastline of the US and Canada before crossing the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe. It ensures that the climate of Western Europe is much warmer than it would otherwise be.

A new study published today (October 9, 2023) in Nature Climate Change now documents that over the past 20 years, the Gulf Stream has warmed faster than the global ocean as a whole and has shifted towards the coast. The study, led by Robert Todd, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), relies on over 25,000 temperature and salinity profiles collected between 2001 and 2023. “The warming we see near the Gulf Stream is due to two combined effects. One is that the ocean is absorbing excess heat from the atmosphere as the climate warms,” said Todd. “The second is that the Gulf Stream itself is gradually shifting towards the coast.”