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When they measure the heat content in the Gulf, do we know how deep they're measuring? If the weather is still, won't the surface water heat faster from the sun when it's not mixed with the deeper gulf water resulting in new "highs"?

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> Oceanic Heat Content (OHC) is the measure of the integrated vertical temperature from the sea surface to the depth of the 26°C isotherm and computed from the altimeter-derived isotherm depths in the upper ocean relative to 20°C.

https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cwn/products/oceanic-heat-conten...

They calculate based upon the depth of a specific temperature rather then temperature at a specific depth.

In this case it seems ocean heat content is a depth integrated measure (see page 11 of this document I found by following links in the above article https://upper-ocean-dynamics.earth.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/atb...). Seems like that OHC measure uses some reanalysis model but surface temperatures can be measured by satellite, and temperatures below can be measured from moorings in the Gulf (https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/obs.shtml) and argo floats currently in the region (https://argo.ucsd.edu/about/status/). I would expect them to all show similar trends.

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