Reevaluation of historical ocean heat content variations with time-varying XBT and MBT depth bias corrections |
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| Authors: | Masayoshi Ishii Masahide Kimoto |
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| Institution: | (1) Frontier Research Center for Global Change, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Showamachi, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama 236-0001, Japan;(2) Center for Climate System Research, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-8586, Japan |
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| Abstract: | As reported in former studies, temperature observations obtained by expendable bathythermographs (XBTs) and mechanical bathythermographs
(MBTs) appear to have positive biases as much as they affect major climate signals. These biases have not been fully taken
into account in previous ocean temperature analyses, which have been widely used to detect global warming signals in the oceans.
This report proposes a methodology for directly eliminating the biases from the XBT and MBT observations. In the case of XBT
observation, assuming that the positive temperature biases mainly originate from greater depths given by conventional XBT
fall-rate equations than the truth, a depth bias equation is constructed by fitting depth differences between XBT data and
more accurate oceanographic observations to a linear equation of elapsed time. Such depth bias equations are introduced separately
for each year and for each probe type. Uncertainty in the gradient of the linear equation is evaluated using a non-parametric
test. The typical depth bias is +10 m at 700 m depth on average, which is probably caused by various indeterminable sources
of error in the XBT observations as well as a lack of representativeness in the fall-rate equations adopted so far. Depth
biases in MBT are fitted to quadratic equations of depth in a similar manner to the XBT method. Correcting the historical
XBT and MBT depth biases by these equations allows a historical ocean temperature analysis to be conducted. In comparison
with the previous temperature analysis, large differences are found in the present analysis as follows: the duration of large
ocean heat content in the 1970s shortens dramatically, and recent ocean cooling becomes insignificant. The result is also
in better agreement with tide gauge observations.
On leave from the Meteorological Research Institute of the Japan Meteorological Agency. |
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| Keywords: | Ocean temperature XBT fall-rate equation oceanographic observation ocean heat content objective analysis |
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