4 ms·

When they measure the heat content in the Gulf, do we know how deep they're measuring? If the weather is still, won't the surface water heat faster from the sun

• upon_drumhead 2y ago
  > Oceanic Heat Content (OHC) is the measure of the integrated vertical temperature from the sea surface to the depth of the 26°C isotherm and computed from the altimeter-derived isotherm depths in the upper ocean relative to 20°C. https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cwn/products/oceanic-heat-content-mixed-layer-depth-and-depths-20degc-and-26degc-isotherms.html https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cwn/products/oceanic-heat-conten... They calculate based upon the depth of a specific temperature rather then temperature at a specific depth.
• waterthrowaway 2y ago
  In this case it seems ocean heat content is a depth integrated measure (see page 11 of this document I found by following links in the above article https://upper-ocean-dynamics.earth.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/atbd_ohc_nesdis_v3.4.pdf https://upper-ocean-dynamics.earth.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/atb...). Seems like that OHC measure uses some reanalysis model but surface temperatures can be measured by satellite, and temperatures below can be measured from moorings in the Gulf (https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/obs.shtml https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/obs.shtml) and argo floats currently in the region (https://argo.ucsd.edu/about/status/ https://argo.ucsd.edu/about/status/). I would expect them to all show similar trends.