Identification

Title

Seasonal constraints on inferred planetary heat content

Abstract

Planetary heating can be quantified using top of the atmosphere energy fluxes or through monitoring the heat content of the Earth system. It has been difficult, however, to compare the two methods with each other because of biases in satellite measurements and incomplete spatial coverage of ocean observations. Here we focus on the the seasonal cycle whose amplitude is large relative to satellite biases and observational errors. The seasonal budget can be closed through inferring contributions from high-latitude oceans and marginal seas using the covariance structure of National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Earth System Model (CESM1). In contrast, if these regions are approximated as the average across well-observed regions, the amplitude of the seasonal cycle is overestimated relative to satellite constraints. Analysis of the same CESM1 simulation indicates that complete measurement of the upper ocean would increase the magnitude and precision of interannual trend estimates in ocean heating more than fully measuring the deep ocean.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d75b047x

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-10-28T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact