Baltic Sea Ocean Heat Content Anomaly (0-300m) from Reanalysis

'''DEFINITION'''The method for calculating the ocean heat content anomaly is based on the daily mean sea water potential temperature fields (Tp) derived from the Baltic Sea reanalysis product BALTICSEA_MULTIYEAR_PHY_003_011. The total heat content is determined using the following formula:HC =  ρ * cp * ( Tp  +273.15).Here, ρ and cp represent spatially varying sea water density and specific heat, respectively, which are computed based on potential temperature, salinity and pressure using the UNESCO 1983 polynomial developed by Fofonoff and Millard (1983). The vertical integral is computed using the static cell vertical thicknesses sourced from the reanalysis product BALTICSEA_MULTIYEAR_PHY_003_011 dataset cmems_mod_bal_phy_my_static, spanning from the sea surface to the 300 m depth. Spatial averaging is performed over the Baltic Sea spatial domain, defined as the region between 13° - 31° E and 53° - 66° N. To obtain the OHC annual anomaly time series in (J/m2), the mean heat content over the reference period of 1993-2014 was subtracted from the annual mean total heat content.We evaluate the uncertainty from the mean annual error of the potential temperature compared to the observations from the Baltic Sea (Giorgetti et al., 2020). The shade corresponds to the RMSD of the annual mean heat content biases (± 35.3 MJ/m²) evaluated from the observed temperatures and corresponding model values.Linear trend (W/m2) has been estimated from the annual anomalies with the uncertainty of 1.96-times standard error.'''CONTEXT'''Ocean heat content is a key ocean climate change indicator. It accounts for the energy absorbed and stored by oceans. Ocean Heat Content in the upper 2,000 m of the World Ocean has increased with the rate of 0.35 ± 0.08 W/m2 in the period 1955–2019, while during the last decade of 2010–2019 the warming rate was 0.70 ± 0.07 W/m2 (Garcia-Soto et al., 2021). The high variability in the local climate of the Baltic Sea region is attributed to the interplay between a temperate marine zone and a subarctic continental zone. Therefore, the Ocean Heat Content of the Baltic Sea could exhibit strong interannual variability and the trend could be less pronounced than in the ocean.'''CMEMS KEY FINDINGS'''Ocean heat content of the Baltic Sea has an increasing trend of 0.3±0.1 W/m2 superimposed with multi-year oscillations. The OHC increase in the Baltic Sea is smaller than the global OHC trend (Holland et al. 2019; von Schuckmann et al. 2019) and in some other marginal seas (von Schuckmann et al. 2018; Lima et al. 2020). Trend values are low due to the shallowness of the Baltic Sea, which limits the accumulation of heat in the water. The highest ocean heat content anomaly was observed in 2020. During the last two years, the heat content anomaly has decreased from its peak value.'''Figure caption'''The time series of horizontally averaged ocean heat content anomaly integrated over 0-300 m depth, for the period of 1993-2022. The temperature from Copernicus Marine Service regional reanalysis product (BALTICSEA_MULTIYEAR_PHY_003_011) have been averaged over the Baltic Sea domain (13 °E - 31 °E; 53 °N - 66 °N; excluding the Skagerrak strait). The shaded area shows the estimated RMSD interval of annual heat content biases.'''DOI (product):''' https://doi.org/10.48670/mds-00322