September 15, 2026 — For years, the story about Atlantic Ocean currents has been one of slowdown, which will cause irreversible change. A new NOAA study complicates it.
Researchers at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and the University of Miami analyzed 31 years of continuous satellite measurements and found the Gulf Stream weakened for a decade and then sped up for about a decade.
Where this happened
The Gulf Stream is a warm ocean current that originates around the Gulf and Caribbean and pushes warm water to the North Atlantic and Europe. But the behavior of the Gulf Stream was not uniform.
Shenfu Dong, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, mentioned that the shift was “far more dynamic than a simple slowdown narrative.”
Long story short, one of the segments of the Gulf Stream, the current upstream leg that moves between Florida and the Bahamas, stayed consistent. But when the stream separates from the coast and runs free in the open Atlantic, that is where the speed-up occurs.