Ocean temperatures are rising at an alarming pace, now warming more than four times faster than they were in the late 1980s, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters today (January 28, 2025).

In the late 1980s, the oceans warmed by just 0.06°C per decade, but this rate has now surged to 0.27°C per decade, highlighting a dramatic acceleration in global warming. Researchers believe this rapid temperature rise is contributing to the record ocean temperatures observed throughout 2023 and early 2024.

Follow THE FUTURE on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and Telegram

Professor Chris Merchant, lead author at the University of Reading and the National Centre for Earth Observation, likened the shift to a bathtub of water. “If the oceans were a bathtub, then in the 1980s, the hot tap was running slowly, warming up the water by just a fraction of a degree each decade. But now, the hot tap is running much faster, and the warming has picked up speed,” said Merchant. “The way to slow down that warming is to start closing off the hot tap, by cutting global carbon emissions and moving towards net-zero.”

Energy Imbalance Driving Acceleration

This increasingly rapid ocean warming is primarily driven by Earth’s growing energy imbalance, where more energy from the Sun is being absorbed than can escape back into space. Since 2010, this imbalance has roughly doubled, in part due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations and a decrease in the Earth’s reflection of sunlight.

From 2023 to early 2024, global ocean temperatures hit record highs for 450 consecutive days. While El Niño, a natural warming phenomenon in the Pacific, contributed to part of this heat, comparisons with the 2015-2016 El Niño revealed that the bulk of the extraordinary warmth could be attributed to the ocean’s increasing rate of heat absorption. In fact, 44% of this record-breaking warmth was due to oceans absorbing heat at a faster rate than in previous decades.

Implications For Future Warming

The study’s findings suggest that the ocean warming experienced over the past four decades may be just the beginning. The rate of warming seen in the last 40 years could be surpassed in just the next two decades, which will have significant implications for global climate patterns. Since the surface oceans set the pace for overall global warming, this accelerating rate of ocean temperature rise is an urgent indicator for the climate as a whole.

This study underscores the pressing need to reduce fossil fuel emissions to avoid even more rapid temperature increases and begin stabilising the climate before it is too late. The warning is clear: if left unchecked, the Earth’s rapidly warming oceans will continue to exacerbate the climate crisis.