Abstract

The Ocean Heat Content (OHC) anomaly has become an increasingly important climate parameter for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment and evaluation of climate change. One good reason is that the OHC appears to be less prone to climate variability, typically experienced with surface temperature and other climate parameters. Therefore, a reasonable estimate of OHC increase is important for research and climate related policies. Levitus et al. (2012) (https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL051106) is a relevant ocean heat content related paper, and their analysis and estimate of OHC increase between 1955 and 2010 is high, about four to seven times greater than what the law of conservation of energy may allow. The source of discrepancy is analyzed in this commentary and it appears to be a result of using corrected ocean data sources. Therefore, verification of the observed increase in OHC using alternative ocean data sources is recommended.