Articles | Volume 12, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020
Data review article
 | 
07 Sep 2020
Data review article |  | 07 Sep 2020

Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?

Karina von Schuckmann, Lijing Cheng, Matthew D. Palmer, James Hansen, Caterina Tassone, Valentin Aich, Susheel Adusumilli, Hugo Beltrami, Tim Boyer, Francisco José Cuesta-Valero, Damien Desbruyères, Catia Domingues, Almudena García-García, Pierre Gentine, John Gilson, Maximilian Gorfer, Leopold Haimberger, Masayoshi Ishii, Gregory C. Johnson, Rachel Killick, Brian A. King, Gottfried Kirchengast, Nicolas Kolodziejczyk, John Lyman, Ben Marzeion, Michael Mayer, Maeva Monier, Didier Paolo Monselesan, Sarah Purkey, Dean Roemmich, Axel Schweiger, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Andrew Shepherd, Donald A. Slater, Andrea K. Steiner, Fiammetta Straneo, Mary-Louise Timmermans, and Susan E. Wijffels

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Cited articles

Abraham, J. P., Baringer, M., Bindoff, N. L., Boyer, T., Cheng, L. J., Church, J. A., Conroy, J. L., Domingues, C. M., Fasullo, J. T., Gilson, J., Goni, G., Good, S. A., Gorman, J. M., Gouretski, V., Ishii, M., Johnson, G. C., Kizu, S., Lyman, J. M., Macdonald, A. M., and Willis, J. K.: A review of global ocean temperature observations: Implications for ocean heat content estimates and climate change, Rev. Geophys., 51, 450–483, https://doi.org/10.1002/rog.20022, 2013. 
Adusumilli, S., Fricker, H. A., Medley, B., Padman, L., and Siegfried, M. R.: Multi-year variability in ocean-driven melting of Antarctica's ice shelves, Nat. Geosci., https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0616-z, online first, 2020. 
Allan, R. P., Liu, C., Loeb, N. G., Palmer, M. D., Roberts, M., Smith, D., and Vidale, P.-L.: Changes in global net radiative imbalance 1985-2012 (I10, trans.), Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 5588–5597, https://doi.org/10.1002/2014GL060962, 2014. 
Allison, L. C., Roberts, C. D., Palmer, M. D., Hermanson, L., Killick, R. E., Rayner, N. A., Smith, D. M., and Andrews, M. B.: Towards quantifying uncertainty in ocean heat content changes using synthetic profiles, Environ. Res. Lett., 14, 084037, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2b0b, 2019. 
Angerer, B., Ladstädter, F., Scherllin-Pirscher, B., Schwärz, M., Steiner, A. K., Foelsche, U., and Kirchengast, G.: Quality aspects of the Wegener Center multi-satellite GPS radio occultation record OPSv5.6, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 10, 4845–4863, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-4845-2017, 2017. 
Short summary
Understanding how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This study is a Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to obtain the Earth heat inventory over the period 1960–2018.
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