@inproceedings{iag2025,
  title={Refining Geodetic Ocean Heat Content Estimates: Improved Leakage Corrections for Gravimetry and associated induced uncertainties in the Ocean Heat Content estimates},
  author={Lecomte, Hugo and Fourest, Sebastien and Meyssignac, Benoit and Blazquez, Alejandro and Pfeffer, Julia and Lalau, Noémie and Fraudeau, Robin and Ablain, Michael and Boughanemi, Alexandre},
  booktitle={IAG Scientific Assembly 2025},
  year={2025},
  month={09},
  note={},
  url={},
  abstract={Estimating Global Ocean Heat Content (GOHC) changes is key for understanding the causes of climate change. GOHC changes serve as an accurate proxy for the Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI), as approximately 91% of the excess of energy stored due to EEI is accumulated in the ocean in the form of enthalpy. Estimates can be derived from two types of measurement. The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) experiment derives EEI estimates from a top of the atmosphere radiation budget measured with space scanning radiometers. The geodetic approach uses a combination of space gravimetry, space altimetry and in-situ temperature profiles from autonomous Argo floats to derive an estimate of the ocean enthalpy changes and further estimate the EEI (referred to as the “geodetic GOHC”).\n With the objective of improving the geodetic estimate of GOHC changes and of EEI, we propose refining the estimation of the manometric sea level derived from space gravimetry observation that enters the geodetic calculation of the GOHC changes and the EEI. The manometric sea level changes estimate are improved with a new leakage correction applied to the time-variable gravity field from space gravimetry. This leakage correction propagates the ocean mass iteratively to the coastline on the corrected area. We compare the new leakage correction with other existing leakage corrections and estimate the uncertainties caused by this correction in the GOHC and EEI estimates. The regional effect on the Ocean Heat Content caused by the leakage correction is assessed and associated uncertainties are derived regionally. We show the improvement gained with the leakage correction, first on the determination of the global and regional manometric sea level and then on the geodetic GOHC. Finally, we will discuss possible causes for remaining observed discrepancies between the geodetic GOHC and the CERES EEI measurements.}
}