Drivers of Local Ocean Heat Content Variability in ECCOv4

Variation in upper-ocean heat content is a critical factor in understanding global climate variability. Using temperature anomaly budgets in a two-decade-long physically consistent ocean state estimate (ECCOv4r3; 1992-2015), we describe the balance between atmospheric forcing and ocean transport mechanisms for different depth horizons and at varying temporal and spatial resolutions. Advection dominates in the tropics, while forcing is most relevant at higher latitudes and in parts of the subtropics, but the balance of dominant processes changes when integrating over greater depths and considering longer time scales. While forcing is shown to increase with coarser resolution, overall the heat budget balance between it and advection is remarkably insensitive to spatial scale. A novel perspective on global ocean heat content variability was made possible by combining unsupervised classification with a measure of temporal variability in heat budget terms to identify coherent dynamical regimes with similar underlying mechanisms, which are consistent with prior research. The vast majority of the ocean includes significant contributions by both forcing and advection. However advection-driven regions were identified that coincide with strong currents, such as western boundary currents, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and the tropics, while forcing-driven regions were defined by shallower wintertime mixed layers and weak velocity fields. This identification of comprehensive dynamical regimes and the sensitivity of the ocean heat budget analysis to exact resolution (for different depth horizons and at varying temporal and spatial resolutions) should provide a useful orientation for future studies of ocean heat content variability in specific ocean regions.