HR: 14:55h
AN: OS33C-06    [Abstracts]
TI: Global ocean heat content 1955-2006 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems
AU: Levitus, S
EM: sydney.levitus@noaa.gov
AF: Ocean Climate Laboratory NODC/NESDIS/NOAA, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910, United States
AU: Antonov, J
EM: john.antonov@noaa.gov
AF: Ocean Climate Laboratory NODC/NESDIS/NOAA, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910, United States
AU: * Boyer, T
EM: boyer@nodc.noaa.gov
AF: Ocean Climate Laboratory NODC/NESDIS/NOAA, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910, United States
AB: Recent focus on instrumental biases and data recording problems have prompted the reexamination of ocean heat content calculated from in situ observations. Warm biases have been shown in XBT (and MBT) temperatures in comparison with bottle and CTD observations. But for most of the 1970s through the 1990s, data distribution of temperature observations without inclusion of XBT data is too sparse for global heat content calculations. Time varying XBT and MBT biases are estimated by statistical checks against nearby CTDs and bottle temperature measurements. Cool biases due to pressure offsets during data recording in a significant subset of profiling floats have also recently been discovered. It is anticipated that these pressure offsets can be corrected, but these corrections are not yet available. Here we present yearly heat content calculated using XBT and MBT profiles corrected for the instrumental biases and excluding floats with a cool bias. Comparisons are made with heat content without bias corrections. Other possible methods for dealing with the XBT warm bias are discussed.
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 1635 Oceans (1616, 3305, 4215, 4513)
DE: 4215 Climate and interannual variability (1616, 1635, 3305, 3309, 4513)
DE: 4262 Ocean observing systems
DE: 4513 Decadal ocean variability (1616, 1635, 3305, 4215)
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting