‘Heat stored in the Earth system: Where does the energy go?’ contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat inventory over the period 1960-2018. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. This Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is the most critical number defining the prospects for continued global warming and climate change. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory, and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2018. Changes in version 2: a) uncertainties have been added and updated in the netcdf file b) Ocean heat content > 2000m depth: update of one time series, and thus revised ensemble mean c) Atmospheric heat content: update of the time series as received by experts on the 29/05/2020 d) Available heat cyropshere: update of the time series as received by experts on the 27/05/2020. e) some attributes have been added for more details.

The dataset ‘Heat stored in the Earth system: Where does the energy go?’ contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat gain over the past 58 years. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. This Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a fundamental metric of climate change. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory, and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2018.

‘Heat stored in the Earth system: Where does the energy go?’ contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat inventory over the period 1960-2018. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. This Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is the most critical number defining the prospects for continued global warming and climate change. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory, and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2018. Changes in version 2: a) uncertainties have been added and updated in the netcdf file b) Ocean heat content > 2000m depth: update of one time series, and thus revised ensemble mean c) Atmospheric heat content: update of the time series as received by experts on the 29/05/2020 d) Available heat cyropshere: update of the time series as received by experts on the 27/05/2020. e) some attributes have been added for more details.

The dataset ‘Heat stored in the Earth system: Where does the energy go?’ contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat gain over the past 58 years. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. This Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a fundamental metric of climate change. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory, and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2018.

The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Earth_Heat_Inventory_Ocean_Heat_Content_data.nc” contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat inventory over the period 1960-2020. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory published in von Schuckmann et al. (2020), and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2020. The dataset also contains estimates for global ocean heat content over 1960-2020 for different depth layers, i.e., 0-300m, 0-700m, 700-2000m, 0-2000m, 2000-bottom, which are described in von Schuckmann et al. (2022).

The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Earth_Heat_Inventory_Ocean_Heat_Content_data.nc” contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat inventory over the period 1960-2020. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory published in von Schuckmann et al. (2020), and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2020. The dataset also contains estimates for global ocean heat content over 1960-2020 for different depth layers, i.e., 0-300m, 0-700m, 700-2000m, 0-2000m, 2000-bottom, which are described in von Schuckmann et al. (2022). This version includes an update of heat storage of global ocean heat content, where one additional product (Li et al., 2022) had been included to the initial estimate. The Earth heat inventory had been updated accordingly, considering also the update for continental heat content (Cuesta-Valero et al., 2023).

The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Permafrost_Heat_Content_data.nc” presents the first estimate of permafrost heat storage within the Arctic region for the period 1960-2020. A perturbed parameter ensemble of simulations using the CryoGridLite permafrost model and climate forcings from the ERA-Interim reanalysis (1979-2020) and the Mk3L climate system model (500 CE -1979) allow to estimate the latent heat flux due to phase change in the subsurface from the surface to 550 m of depth. This ensemble of simulations allows to retrieve the uncertainty due to the unknown distribution of ground ice in the Arctic. More info: ESSOAr preprint server, https://doi.org/10.1002/essoar.10511600.1. The data are described in Nitzbon et al. (2022), and used in von Schuckmann et al. (2022).

The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Inland_Water_Heat_Content_data.nc” presents an updated estimate of the global heat storage within natural lakes and artificial reservoirs for the period 1960-2020. Several improvements have been implemented in comparison with Vanderkelen et al. (2020): new approach to estimate lake volume, new lake models considered, and an extension of the analysis period. The data are used in von Schuckmann et al. (2022).

The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Cryosphere_Heat_Content_data.nc” presents an updated estimate of the global cryosphere heat uptake from 1960-2020. The cryosphere heat uptake sums the energy change associated with changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. This represents an update to the record described in von Schuckmann et al. (2020) with the inclusion of observationally-based estimates for recent Arctic sea-ice change, and the data are used in von Schuckmann et al. (2022).

The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Continental_Heat_Content_data.nc” presents an updated estimate of the global continental heat storage for the period 1960-2020. For the first time, the continental heat storage is assessed as composed by: ground heat storage due to changes in subsurface temperatures, inland water heat storage due to the warming of inland water bodies, and permafrost heat storage due to thawing of ground ice in the Arctic. Furthermore, we argue that all three components of the continental heat storage should be monitored independently of their relative magnitude, as heat gain in the three components alters several important climate phenomena affecting society and ecosystems. This file contains the total continental heat storage relative to 1960. The ground heat storage has been estimated by inverting 1079 subsurface temperature profiles form the Xibalbá database (https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Xibalb_Underground_Temperature_Database/13516487) and a bootstrap technique to aggregate the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) inversions of each profile (Cuesta-Valero et al., 2022a). The data are used in Cuesta-Valero et al. (2022b) and von Schuckmann et al. (2022).