Estimation of Heat Content and Mean Temperature of Different Ocean Layers

Oceans are reservoirs of heat energy represented by the heat content or the mean temperature, and are the source of energy for the atmospheric processes. Which process of the atmosphere interacts with the energy of which layer of the ocean is not clear, primarily, because of the nonavailability of oceanic heat energy of different layers on a required temporal and spatial scales. Realizing this requirement, we compute the ocean heat content (OHC) and the ocean mean temperature (OMT) from surface to 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 500, 700 m and upto 26 °C isotherm depth. Thus, we computed altogether 16 variables from satellite observations of sea surface height anomaly (SSHA), sea surface temperature (SST), and the climatological values of the above 16 variables through an artificial neural network (ANN). The model is developed using 11472 in situ and satellite collocated observations and is validated using 2479 independent values that are not used for developing the model. These estimations have a strong Pearson correlation coefficient, r, of more than 0.90 (at 99% confidence level) between the estimated and in situ values. These parameters are provided on near real time daily basis at a spatial resolution of 0.25° at the Bhuvan website of National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, which can be downloaded by a researcher for further ocean-atmosphere interaction investigations.