Oceanic heat content

Oceanic heat content (OHC) is the heat stored in the ocean. Oceanography and climatology are the science branches which study ocean heat content. Changes in the ocean heat content play an important role in the sea level rise, because of thermal expansion. It is with high confidence that ocean warming accounts for 90% of the energy accumulation from global warming between 1971 and 2010. About one third of that extra heat has been estimated to propagate to depth below 700 meters.

The areal density of ocean heat content between two depth levels is defined as:

${\displaystyle H=\rho c_{p}\int _{h2}^{h1}T(z)dz}$

where ${\displaystyle \rho }$ is seawater density, ${\displaystyle c_{p}}$ is the specific heat of sea water, h2 is the lower depth, h1 is the upper depth, and ${\displaystyle T(z)}$ is the temperature profile. In SI units, ${\displaystyle H}$ has units of J·m⁻². Integrating this density over an ocean basin, or entire ocean, gives the total heat content, as indicated in the figure to right. Thus, the total heat content is the product of the density, specific heat capacity, and the volume integral of temperature over the three-dimensional region of the ocean in question.

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