A dynamically consistent state estimate is used for the period 1992–2011 to describe the changes in oceanic temperatures and heat content, with an emphasis on determining the noise background in the abyssal (below 2000 m) depths. Interpretation requires close attention to the long memory of the deep ocean, implying that meteorological forcing of decades to thousands of years ago should still be producing trendlike changes in abyssal heat content. Much of the deep-ocean volume remained unobserved. At the present time, warming is seen in the deep western Atlantic and Southern Oceans, roughly consistent with those regions of the ocean expected to display the earliest responses to surface disturbances. Parts of the deeper ocean, below 3600 m, show cooling. Most of the variation in the abyssal Pacific Ocean is comparatively featureless, consistent with the slow, diffusive approach to a steady state expected there. In the global average, changes in heat content below 2000 m are roughly 10% of those inferred for the upper ocean over the 20-yr period. A useful global observing strategy for detecting future change has to be designed to account for the different time and spatial scales manifested in the observed changes. If the precision estimates of heat content change are independent of systematic errors, determining oceanic heat uptake values equivalent to 0.1 W m[superscript −2] is possibly attainable over future bidecadal periods.
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机译：使用动态一致的状态估计值来描述1992-2011年期间海洋温度和热量含量的变化，重点是确定深海（2000 m以下）深度的噪声背景。解释需要密切关注深海的长时记忆，这意味着数十年到数千年前的气象强迫仍应在深海热量含量方面产生类似趋势的变化。许多深海量仍未观测到。目前，在大西洋西部深部和南部海洋中出现了变暖现象，这与预期对表面扰动表现出最早反应的海洋区域基本一致。低于3600 m的深海部分区域正在冷却。在深海太平洋中，大多数变化是比较无特征的，这与那里预期的缓慢，扩散的稳态方法是一致的。在全球平均水平上，低于2000 m的热量含量变化大约是20年期间上层海洋推断热量变化的10％。必须设计一种有用的全球观测策略来检测未来的变化，以解决观测到的变化中所表现出的不同时间和空间尺度。如果热量含量变化的精确估计与系统误差无关，则可能在未来的双学期确定等于0.1 W m [上标-2]的海洋热量吸收值。
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