Warming of the world ocean, 1955–2003

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2371

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

2005

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Introduction

Based on the physical properties and mass of the world ocean as compared to other components of

Earth’s climate system, Rossby [1959] suggested that ocean heat content may be the dominant

component of the variability of Earth’s heat balance. Recent work [Levitus et al., 2000, 2001] has

confirmed Rossby’s suggestion. Warming of the world ocean due to increasing atmospheric

greenhouse gases was first identified in a report by Revelle et al. [1965]. The delay of atmospheric

warming by increasing greenhouse gases due to initial heating of the world ocean

was suggested by the National Research Council [NRC, 1979]. Here we present new yearly

estimates for the 1955–2003 period for the upper 300 m and 700 m layers and pentadal (5-year)

estimates for the 1955–1959 through 1994–1998 period for the upper 3000 m of the world ocean.

The heat content estimates we present are based on an additional 1.7 million (S. Levitus et al.,

Building ocean profile-plankton databases for climate and ecosystem research, submitted to Bulletin

of the American Meteorological Society, 2004) temperature profiles that have become available as

part of the World Ocean Database 2001 [Conkright et al., 2002]. Also, we have processed

approximately 310,000 additional temperature profiles since the release of WOD01 and include

these in our analyses. Heat content computations are similar to those described by Levitus and

Antonov [1997]. Here we use 1957–1990 as the reference period for our estimates.