Carolina Camargo

Carolina Camargo

Oceanographer & Sea-level Scientist

Talks and presentations

The connection between coastal sea level and local ocean dynamics, and its relation to high-tide flooding along southern New England (U.S.)

May 23, 2024

Talk, EGU, Vienna, Austria

According to NOAA’s Annual High Tide Flooding Outlook [1], the number of high-tide flooding days along the US East coast has increased rapidly in recent years. High-tide flooding, also known as nuisance flooding, identifies floods that can occur in the absence of storms, for example, simply due to above-normal water levels.. Due to sea-level rise, it is predicted that, by 2050, coastal communities across the U.S. will experience high-tide flooding on average 45 to 85 days per year. Predicting the frequency of future coastal flooding is vital for the development and maintenance of coastal cities. Here we discuss the role of local ocean dynamics to coastal flooding.

From shelfbreak to shoreline: What is the relationship between coastal sea level and local ocean dynamics?

February 23, 2024

Talk, OSM, New Orleans, U.S.

The US East Coast is a heavily populated coastline, and models project that it will experience faster-than-global rates of sea-level rise in the coming century. Sea level changes due to several factors, such as ocean thermal expansion, melting of land ice, and ocean dynamics. The latter is one of the least well-known sea-level components. While several studies have shown a relationship between Gulf Stream transport and coastal sea level South of Cape Hatteras, such causal linkage to large-scale open-ocean circulation has not been shown for coastal sea level North of Cape Hatteras, possibly because coastal sea level here is more strongly related to local circulation over the shelf and the slope. Here we use 7 years of hourly velocity data from the Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) Coastal Pioneer Array to test this hypothesis. The Array is located at the New England shelfbreak ~75 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, and is composed of seven site moorings, spread from the shelf to offshore of the shelf break. Each mooring contains, among other instruments, an upward-looking ADCP, which measures three-dimensional velocities throughout the water column. This unique dataset, together with the dense network of coastal tide gauges, allows for a great case study of coastal sea level and local ocean dynamics.

From Shelfbreak to Shoreline: Coastal Sea Level and Local Ocean Dynamics in the Northwest Atlantic (Invited)

May 04, 2023

Talk, AGU, Washington D.C., U.S.

IThe US East Coast is a heavily populated region, and models project that it will experience faster-than-global rates of sea-level rise in the coming century. Hence it is important to understand the underlying causes of sea-level variability. Along the US East Coast, an important driver of coastal sea-level variability is ocean dynamics, related to both large-scale circulation, such as the Gulf Stream, and also smaller local ocean currents. A relevant circulation feature in this region is the Shelf break jet (SBJ). The SBJ flows equatorward from the Labrador Sea towards the Gulf Stream at Cape Hatteras following the shelf break along the Northeast US coast. Here, we use 7 years of velocity data from the Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) Coastal Pioneer Array, together with tide-gauge data from 2014-2022 to establish the connection between coastal sea level and local ocean circulation over the shelf and the slope. Located at the New England shelf break, about 75 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, the Array has seven site moorings, spread from the shelf to offshore of the shelf break. Each mooring contains, among other instruments, an upward-looking ADCP, which measures three-dimensional velocities throughout the water column

Sea-level change along the South American Atlantic coastline

May 04, 2023

Talk, EGU, Vienna, Austria

In comparison with the number of tide gauges measuring in-situ sea-level change along the Northern Hermisphere coastlines, the Southern Hemisphere has a poor spatial distribution of stations. For example, along the South American Atlantic coastline, only 12 tide gauges are registered at the Permanent Service for Mean Sea-level (PSMSL), of which only two have been updated in the last three years. While satellite altimetry can be used to provide data in locations where there is no in-situ data, estimating coastal sea-level change using altimetry data is challenging due to the distortion of the satellite signal close to the land. Consequently, sea-level change along the South American Atlantic coastline is still poorly understood. Here, we fill this gap by using coastal altimetry products together with a new network of tide gauges deployed along the coast of Brazil (by the SIMCosta project). Via a sea-level budget analysis, we look at the regional drivers of sea-level change along the coast.

Regionalizing the Sea-level Budget Using a Neural Network Approach

May 23, 2022

Talk, EGU, Vienna, Austria

“Understanding the drivers of present-day sea-level change is vital for improving sea-level projections and for adaptation and mitigation plans against sea-level rise. Sea-level budget (SLB) studies focus on attributing the observed sea-level change to its different drivers (steric and barystatic changes). While the global mean SLB is closed, explaining the drivers of sea-level change on a finer spatial scale leads to large discrepancies. Recent studies have shown that closing the regional budget on a regular 1x1˚ grid is not possible due to limitations of the observations itself, but also due to the spatial patterns and variability of the underlying processes. Consequently, the regional budget has been mainly analyzed on a basin-wide scale.

Regional patterns of ocean mass sea-level change over the satellite altimetry era

April 19, 2021

Talk, EGU, Virtual

“Ocean mass variation is one of the main drivers of present-day sea-level change (SLC). Also known as barystatic SLC, those fluctuations are due to the melting of continental ice from glaciers and ice sheets, and variations in landwater storage. While a large number of studies have quantified the contribution of barystatic SLC to global mean SLC, fewer works have looked into how much ocean mass has contributed to regional SLC. Besides, most of the regional studies have focused only on the effect of one of the components (e.g., melt from Antarctica), or on the period and results of the GRACE satellite mission (since 2002). This work aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of global and regional barystatic SLC since 1993. For that, we collect a suite of estimates of the individual freshwater sources, namely the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, glaciers and terrestrial water storage. We then use them as input on the sea-level equation to obtain regional patters (fingerprints) of barystatic SLC, and validate our results by comparing the individual estimates with the values obtained from GRACE products. We finalize our analysis by looking into trend uncertainty patterns related to each contribution.”

Revisiting the Global and Regional Steric Sea-level Trends in the Satellite Era

May 04, 2020

Talk, EGU, Virtual

The steric component of sea-level change comprises variations in the temperature (thermosteric) and salinity (halosteric) of the oceans, which alter the water’s density, leading to volumetric variations of the water column. Although its importance is unarguable, throughout the literature there is a disagreement on how much the steric component actually contributes to sea-level change.