Oceans are warming rapidly, study says

More than 90 percent of the Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) in the climate system is sequestered in the ocean, and consequently, the ocean heat content (OHC) is increasing. Therefore, OHC is one of the most important indicators of global warming. During the past 30 years, many independent groups have worked to estimate historical OHC changes. However, high uncertainty prevails among the published global OHC time series. For example, during the current surge of research on the so-called “hiatus” or “slowdown,” many scientific studies draw different conclusions on key scientific question like where heat is redistributed in the ocean. This motivates the researchers of the current study to offer a detailed analysis of global and basin OHC changes based on multiple ocean datasets.