The IAP/CAS analysis is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42122046 and 42076202) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB42040402). NCAR is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. The efforts of Dr. Fasullo in this work were supported by NASA Awards 80NSSC17K0565 and 80NSSC22K0046, and by the Regional and Global Model Analysis (RGMA) component of the Earth and Environmental System Modeling Program of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Biological & Environmental Research (BER) via National Science Foundation IA 1947282.

The efforts of Dr. A. MISHONOV were supported by NOAA (Grant No. NA19NES4320002 to CISESS-MD at the University of Maryland). The IAP/CAS data are available at http://www.ocean.iap.ac.cn/ and https://msdc.qdio.ac.cn. The NCEI/NOAA data are available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/climate-data-records/global-ocean-heat-content. This study has been conducted using also E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information (https://marine.copernicus.eu/) for the Mediterranean OHC estimate. G. Li is supported by the Young Talent Support Project of Guangzhou Association for Science and Technology.