Observation-based reconciliation of the Earth's Energy Imbalance budget constraint

<p>The Earth&#8217;s Energy Imbalance (EEI) represents the balance of heat fluxes between<br>the Earth and outer space in response to radiative forcings and associated climate feedbacks,<br>and as such is a key metric to understand and define global climate change. Recent<br>publications have shown that the EEI has doubled in the last two decades, which would have<br>major impacts on the different components of the Earth&#8217;s system. However, these results also<br>show inconsistencies in the quantification of this increase depending on the observing system<br>considered. In this study, we investigate two independent ways to estimate EEI from ocean<br>observations and from energy budget at the top of the atmosphere inferred from satellite. We<br>show that these two observing systems lead to consistent estimates of EEI variability and<br>amplitude over the period 2005-2019. Global Ocean Heat Content (GOHC) is derived from a<br>suite of ocean in situ temperature products, and is also compared to satellite estimate and to<br>ocean reanalysis estimate. We provide recommendations on how to achieve a consistent and<br>optimized observation-based comparison between estimates for the EEI budget constraint<br>approach from independent global climate observing system components and at different<br>time-scale ranging from interannual to decadal.</p>