Heat Content (OHC)
D1. Physical and chemical oceanography and marine meteorologyDefinition
Integrated heat stored in a water column, often expressed for the upper 700 or 2000 meters.
Ocean heat content is the heat stored in a water column, usually integrated over the upper 700 m or 2,000 m and reported in joules or as anomalies relative to a climatology. Because water’s heat capacity is large, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the energy added to the climate system, making OHC the most reliable single measure of global warming. Argo floats and historical XBT and CTD data drive the estimates.