Changes in Energy Imbalance at the Ocean Surface during the “hiatus” period

Despite the recent slowdown in the rate of surface warming, a general consensus exists, that is, the Earth continues to gain energy and almost all the energy added to the Earth system is accumulated in the oceans. Nevertheless, key issues remain unaddressed regarding the actual energy imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere and the Earth surface, their changes over time, and their storage and distribution in the oceans. Quantifying and tracking the energy flow through the Earth System require consistent and accurate record of observations, but existing observation platforms contain various degrees of uncertainty. There is a need to cross-validate the energy budget estimates from different resources and from different approaches. In this study, we conducted an assessment of net energy budget at the ocean surface estimated from three general sources, the satellite-based analysis (WHOI OAFlux and NASA CERES), an ocean state estimator (MIT ECCO), and the atmospheric reanalysis products. For the “hiatus” period (2001-2010) in study, all products show that the oceans have been on net energy gain, but the magnitude varies and the differences in the rate of the decadal change in energy imbalance are large. While the reanalysis products show either upward or downward trends, ECCO and OAFlux/CERES indicate that the energy imbalance remains near constant. The downward trend in ERA-Interim started from 2006, driven by a peculiar pattern change in the Pacific. ECCO, which used ERA-Interim as initial surface forcing, corrected the pattern and maintained a near steady rate. ECCO assimilates observations from oceanographic satellites and Argo profiles, while the OAFlux/CERES Q_net were obtained from satellite atmospheric and near-surface observations using no dynamical models but the state-of-the-art flux algorithms and statistical approaches. Given the differences in input data sources and approaches, the agreement between ECCO and OAFlux/CERES is encouraging and instructive.