Sensitivity of Observationally Based Estimates of Ocean Heat Content and Thermal Expansion to Vertical Interpolation Schemes

The Earth is warming as a result of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. About 90% of the additional energy stored in the climate system since the 1950s is in the ocean, with about 60% of the ocean storage in the upper 700 db. Our recent research (Li et al. Accepted 2022) has shown that accurate estimates of the ocean warming require accurate interpolation between the sparse sampling depths of historical profiles. Using a non-linear vertical interpolation scheme (Multiply-Rotated Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolating Polynomials, MR-PCHIP) that better approximates the change in temperature with depth results in larger estimates of ocean warming and ocean thermal expansion than a simple but biased estimates using linear interpolation. There are 8 files: Readme.txt, and 7 files corresponding to Figures 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 2 and S1 of Li et al. (2022). These files demonstrate the impact of different vertical interpolation techniques on ocean heat content and steric sea level. Users of the data should cite Li et al. (Accepted 2022)