Evaluating surface heat budget components in atmospheric and ocean reanalyses: a report from selected literature

The following report reviews evaluations of surface heat flux representations in atmospheric and ocean reanalyses including previous trend analyses. The purpose of this research is to build a foundation towards understanding the adjustment of the surface heat balance as the ocean surface warms, beginning with an analysis of applicable data sets available through reanalysis products. We present the following discussion on the extent to which our current generation of atmospheric and ocean reanalyses provide reliable, statistically-significant, and physically plausible representations of the surface heat budget. Overall atmospheric and ocean reanalyses are in high climatological agreement for surface heat budget flux values, apart from select regional and parameterized discrepancies. However, caution for the application of reanalyses for trend analysis is still required in order to confidently pursue research related to the ocean surface heat readjustment under global warming using reanalysis products.