Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content

Rising amounts of greenhouse gases are preventing heat radiated from Earth’s surface from escaping into space as freely as it used to. Most of the excess atmospheric heat is passed back to the ocean. As a result, upper ocean heat content has increased significantly over the past few decades. Upper layers are accumulating heat faster than deeper layers, but averaged over the full depth of the global ocean, the 1993–2024 heat-gain rates are approximately 0.66 to 0.74 Watts per square meter averaged over the surface of the Earth.

Seasonal (3-month) heat energy in the top half-mile of the ocean compared to the 1955-2006 average. Heat content in the global ocean has been consistently above-average (red bars) since the mid-1990s. More than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the Earth system due to human-caused global warming has been absorbed by the oceans. NOAA Climate.gov graph, based on data (0-700m) from the NCEI Ocean Heat Content product collection.

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