Sensitivity of Global Upper Ocean Heat Content Estimates to Mapping Methods, XBT Bias Corrections, and Baseline Climatologies

Tim Boyer1, Catia M Domingues2, Simon A Good3, Gregory C Johnson4, John M Lyman5, Masayoshi Ishii6, Viktor Vladimir Gouretski7, Josh K Willis8, John Antonov9, John A Church10, Rebecca Cowley11, N L Bindoff10 and Susan Anne Wijffels10, (1)National Oceanographic Data Center, Silver Spring, MD, United States, (2)Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre, Hobart, Australia, (3)Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom, (4)NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, United States, (5)JIMAR/PMEL, Seattle, WA, United States, (6)Japan Meteorological Agency, Tsukuba, Japan, (7)University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, (8)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (9)University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (10)CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Hobart, Australia, (11)CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Hobart, Hobart, TAS, Australia
Abstract:
Ocean warming accounts for the majority of Earth’s current energy imbalance. Historic Ocean Heat Content (OHC) changes are important to understanding our changing climate. Calculations of OHC anomalies (OHCA) from in situ measurements provide estimates of these changes. Uncertainties in OHCA estimates arise from temporal and spatial inhomogeneity of subsurface ocean temperature measurements, instrument bias corrections, and the definitions of a mean ocean climatology from which anomalies are calculated. To quantify the uncertainties and biases these different factors contribute for different OHCA estimation methods, and the uncertainty in these different estimation methods, the same data set with the same quality control is used by seven groups calculating eight OHCA estimates for 0-700m depth and comparisons made.
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