[4] When sea level fell from 2010 to 2011, Willis stated that this was due to an unusually large La Niña transferring more rainfall over land rather than over the ocean as usually happens.

[7] After graduating from high school, Willis studied physics and mathematics at the University of Houston earning his B.S.

Soon after, Willis discovered Scripps Institution of Oceanography and began studying the physics of climate change and the ocean's effect on global warming.

[11] While Willis cautioned against drawing conclusions based on such a short time period, the study was widely covered in the media, with climate change deniers citing it as evidence that global warming was no longer occurring.

[11] The original 2006 paper has since been corrected, with Willis et al. stating, "Most of the rapid decrease in globally integrated upper (0–750 m) ocean heat content anomalies (OHCA) between 2003 and 2005 reported by Lyman et al. [2006] appears to be an artifact resulting from the combination of two different instrument biases recently discovered in the in situ profile data.

[15][16] On October 5, 2014, Willis was a co-author on a paper reporting that the warming of the deep ocean had not contributed to a detectable extent to either sea level rise or the Earth's energy budget.