Recent studies by Sturges and collaborators suggest a simple, but powerful, technique to estimate climatic changes in the transport of the Gulf Stream from the difference between the oceanic sea level calculated with a simple wind-driven Rossby wave model and the observed coastal sea level. The hypothesis behind this technique is tested, using 40 years of data (1950 to 1989) obtained from a three-dimensional Atlantic Ocean model forced by observed surface data. The analysis shows that variations in sea level difference between the ocean and the coast are indeed coherent with variations of the Gulf Stream transport for periods shorter than 1 year or longer than 4--5 years. The results obtained from the three-dimensional model confirm the findings of the simple Rossby wave model that decadal climatic changes in the Gulf Stream transport vary considerably with latitude. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union