Global ocean heat content 1955-2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems

Type Article
Date 2009-04
Language English
Author(s) Levitus S.1, Antonov J. I.1, Boyer T. P.1, Locarnini R. A.1, Garcia H. E.1, Mishonov A. V.1
Affiliation(s) 1 : NOAA, Natl Oceanog Data Ctr, Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA.
Source Geophysical Research Letters (0094-8276) (Amer Geophysical Union), 2009-04 , Vol. 36 , N. 7 , P. L07608 (5p.)
DOI 10.1029/2008GL037155
WOS© Times Cited 535
Note This article also appears in: GRL 40th Anniversary Special Collection
Abstract

We provide estimates of the warming of the world ocean for 1955-2008 based on historical data not previously available, additional modern data, correcting for instrumental biases of bathythermograph data, and correcting or excluding some Argo float data. The strong interdecadal variability of global ocean heat content reported previously by us is reduced in magnitude but the linear trend in ocean heat content remain similar to our earlier estimate. Citation: Levitus, S., J. I. Antonov, T. P. Boyer, R. A. Locarnini, H. E. Garcia, and A. V. Mishonov (2009), Global ocean heat content 1955-2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L07608, doi: 10.1029/2008GL037155.
Full Text
File Pages Size Access
Publisher's official version 5 153 KB Open access
Readme 5 KB Open access
Figure S1. Frequency distribution of 2° latitude × 4° longitude boxes XBT minus OSD/CTD temperature differences for 1999 at 150 m depth. 246 KB Open access
Figure S2. Time series of the number of 2° latitude × 4° longitude boxes per year of the MBT minus OSD/CTD difference pairs and a similar series for XBT minus OSD/CTD di 405 KB Open access
Figure S3. Percent ocean area of 2° latitude belts with 2° latitude × 4° longitude boxes containing XBT minus OSD/CTD differences. 331 KB Open access
Figure S4. Time series of the offsets based on arithmetic mean of the offsets between XBT and OSD/CTD data. 460 KB Open access
Figure S5. Time series of offsets based on arithmetic mean of the offsets between MBT and OSD/CTD data. 526 KB Open access
Figure S6. Time series of the temperature corrections based on medians of the differences applied to MBT observations. 331 KB Open access
Figure S7. Time series of the offsets between XBT and OSD/CTD based on the median of the offsets after bias corrections have been applied twice. 376 KB Open access
Figure S8. Time series of the offsets between MBT and OSD/CTD after bias corrections have been applied twice based on the median of the offsets. 282 KB Open access
Figure S9. Yearly time series of ocean heat content for the 0–700 m layer from this study and from Domingues et al. [2008] and Ishii and Kimoto [2008]. 370 KB Open access
Figure S10. Yearly time series of ocean heat content for the 0–700 m layer from Domingues et al. [2008] and based on application of the Wijffels et al. [2008] XBT bias correction to our profile databa 340 KB Open access
Figure S11. Time series of yearly ocean heat content for the 0–700 m layer of the world ocean and individual ocean basins. 566 KB Open access
Figure S12. Seasonal time series of yearly ocean heat content for the 0–700 m from this study and their trends for 1969–2008. 394 KB Open access
Figure S13. Yearly time series of ocean heat content for the 0–700 m layer based on the all‐data yearly fields and the average of the four seasonal yearly fields. 349 KB Open access
Figure S14. Time series of seasonal OHC700 estimates and annual mean of the four seasons. 360 KB Open access
Table S1. Change in ocean heat content and mean temperature for the 0–700 m layer for the world ocean and individual basins as determined by the linear trend for the 1969–2008 period. 1 KB Open access
Top of the page