Observed changes in ocean heat content have now been shown to be inconsistent with simulated natural climate variability, but consistent with a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences both on a global scale, and in individual ocean basins.
Not exact matches
However, radiation
changes at the top of the atmosphere from the 1980s to 1990s, possibly related
in part to the El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, appear to be associated with reductions
in tropical upper - level cloud cover, and are linked to
changes in the energy budget at the surface and
changes in observed ocean heat content.
You've got the radiative physics, the measurements of
ocean temperature and land temperature, the
changes in ocean heat content (Hint — upwards, whereas if if was just a matter of circulation moving
heat around you might expect something more simple) and of course
observed predictions such as stratospheric cooling which you don't get when warming occurs from oceanic circulation.
In this work the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is estimated based on observed near - surface temperature change from the instrumental record, changes in ocean heat content and detailed RF time serie
In this work the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is estimated based on
observed near - surface temperature
change from the instrumental record,
changes in ocean heat content and detailed RF time serie
in ocean heat content and detailed RF time series.
Temperatures measured by the ARGO floats and the XBTs before them are rising
in the raw data, and the
ocean heat content (OHC) is simply
observed temperature
change scaled by the thermal mass of the
ocean layer
in question - not some kind of complex model.
However, the spatial pattern of the PDO includes warming
in some places and cooling
in others;
in fact,
changes consistent with the PDO can be seen
in the geographic pattern of
observed ocean heat content changes.
With a dominant internal component having the structure of the
observed warming, and with radiative restoring strong enough to keep the forced component small, how can one keep the very strong radiative restoring from producing
heat loss from the
oceans totally inconsistent with any measures of
changes in oceanic
heat content?
Slow variations
in upper
ocean heat content that have been
observed in the subpolar and marginal ice zone regions of the Atlantic since the mid-twentieth century are thought to be related to
changes in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
The
observed patterns of surface warming, temperature
changes through the atmosphere, increases
in ocean heat content, increases
in atmospheric moisture, sea level rise, and increased melting of land and sea ice also match the patterns scientists expect to see due to rising levels of CO2 and other human - induced
changes (see Question 5).
Looking at the last decade, it is clear that the
observed rate of
change of upper
ocean heat content is a little slower than previously (and below linear extrapolations of the pre-2003 model output), and it remains unclear to what extent that is related to a reduction
in net radiative forcing growth (due to the solar cycle, or perhaps larger than expected aerosol forcing growth), or internal variability, model errors, or data processing — arguments have been made for all four, singly and together.