Figure 5
From: Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over the past six decades
1960–2020 time evolution of decadal heating rates of the Earth. The in-situ estimates of ocean heating rates are represented for each individual product (blue dashed curve, refer to Table S2 for references) and for the ensemble mean (bold blue curve). These estimates are compared to GCOS7 (bold red curve), reanalyses (pink curve) and satellite20 (MOHeaCAN; orange curve) ocean heating rates. Non-ocean heating rates (green curve) are computed from GCOS heat content time series7, and equal to the sum of atmosphere, land and cryosphere heating rates. The 10-year means of the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) net radiative flux (black curve) are anchored on the 2005–2020 Earth Heat Inventory (EHI) trend of 0.75 ± 0.24 W/m2 (refer to the Methods section for detailed information on TOA net flux anchoring). Heating rates and associated uncertainties are computed from WLS regression and are relative to the Earth’s surface at the top-of-atmosphere (as described in the “Methods” section). The uncertainties take into account autocorrelation and are shown at the 95% confidence level for all estimates (see “Methods”) except TOA net radiative flux, where uncertainties of ± 0.1 W/m2 have been reported44. The black triangles indicate major volcanic eruptions that have occurred since 1960. In the context of the heating rates, a positive value indicates that the Earth system is experiencing warming, while a negative value is associated with a cooling.
