The Human Impacts Database

A collection of useful numbers for quantifying the impacts of the human presence on Earth.

Ocean heat uptake

WaterOceans & Seas

This quantity is a single measurement of the quantity at a given point in time (1992-2015).

Value:

This is equivalent to...

(3.0 ± 0.4) × 1015 kWh / yr

(3.5 ± 0.5) × 1014 W

350 ± 50 TW
HuID: 94108
Relevant Year(s): 1992-2015
Summary: Ocean heat uptake by the ocean due to global warming. The ocean heat uptake is computed adding the ocean heat content trend for depth layers 0-700 m, 700 - 2000 m, and below 2000 m. Ocean heat content trends above 2000 m are reported in Table S1 (supplementary information) of the article. Ocean heat content trends reported below 2000 m depth are taken from Purkey and Johnson (2010) from 1980; reference in source article. The warming below 2000 m is extended back to 1960 by Cheng et al. (2017) by assuming a zero heating rate before 1990 below 2000 m, because ocean heat content changes are found to be very small for 700 to 2000 m before 1990. Trends for the full depth used here take the estimates for 0-700 m, 700-2000 m, and below 2000 m, and assume perfect correlation between the estimates at different layers. We assume perfect correlation to give the highest possible level of uncertainty given the data provided in the manuscript.
Method: Uncertainty represents the 95% confidence interval. Estimate obtained using in situ temperature data and model simulations. In situ temperature from 1960 to 2015 are obtained from the World Ocean Database (WOD) from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The quality flags provided by WOD were used to remove erroneous profiles and measurements. In situ temperature data are combined with covariances from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) multi-model simulations to provide an improved prior guess.
Source: Cheng, L., Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J., Boyer, T., Abraham, J. and Zhu, J. Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960 to 2015. Science Advances (2017)
Dataset: Ocean heat content trend (ohc_trends_cheng2017.csv)
global resolution
Added By: ilopezgo