The committed warming reservoir

Oceans absorb ~90% of excess planetary heat. This heat represents warming committed regardless of future emissions decisions.

Ocean Surface Temperature · Argo Float Network

CURRENT

Data through 2026-09-20

Mean anomaly

+0.87°C

vs WOA climatology by location

Above / below baseline

77% above · 23% below

Coverage

3,439 floats reporting

Mean anomaly

+0.18°C

vs WOA climatology by location

Above / below baseline

59% above · 41% below

Coverage

3,371 of 3,439 floats reporting

Mean anomaly

+0.00°C

vs WOA climatology by location

Above / below baseline

47% above · 53% below

Coverage

3,253 of 3,439 floats reporting

Mean anomaly

+0.03°C

vs WOA climatology by location

Above / below baseline

56% above · 44% below

Coverage

3,081 of 3,439 floats reporting

EL NIÑO SIGNAL

+3.00°C

259 floats in region

AMOC FINGERPRINT

+0.69°C

118 floats in region

ARCTIC ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION FASTEST WARMING OCEAN REGION

+0.81°C

106 floats in region

NORTH PACIFIC MARINE HEATWAVE REGION

+1.51°C

83 floats in region

SOUTHERN OCEAN PRIMARY HEAT SINK

+0.07°C

279 floats in region

INDIAN OCEAN FASTEST WARMING BASIN

+0.83°C

143 floats in region

ATLANTIC MDR HURRICANE MAIN DEVELOPMENT REGION

+1.16°C

126 floats in region

GULF OF MEXICO HURRICANE INTENSIFICATION ZONE

+1.40°C

39 floats in region

MEDITERRANEAN FASTEST WARMING SEA

+1.95°C

77 floats in region

GLOBAL ANOMALIES OFF THE NORMAL SCALE

282

244 warm · 38 cold

Hover over Regions

Choose your depth

Atmospheric forcing signal — what's happening now · Argo float anomalies vs WOA climatology

The ocean doesn't care about the political calendar.

ⓘ methodology & sources

Argovis API (argovis-api.colorado.edu); Argo Program (Argo, 2024). 3,800+ autonomous profiling floats operated by ~30 nations. Each float descends to 2,000 m and measures temperature and salinity as it rises, transmitting via satellite every ~10 days. Surface temperature shown at 0–30 dbar depth. Raw degrees Celsius — no anomaly baseline applied. Blue = polar cold, orange/red = tropical warm. Data window: rolling 10-day, de-duplicated to one reading per float.

Recent Global Sea Surface Temperature · 2026 against the 1981–2025 envelope

Climate Reanalyzer / OISST v2.1 IAP/CAS · Cheng et al. CURRENT

2026-09-24 · 2d old

1940–2026 · one July per year

Global SST

21.11°C

+0.80°C vs 1991–2020 mean · Sep 24

Upper Edge of Envelope

2026 above the 1981–2025 mean
267 of 267 days YTD

Calendar-Day Records

127 of 267 days set
an all-time calendar-day record

Hotter Than 2024

127 of 267 days
above the 2024 trace

Today in Context

Sep 24 · 2026 ranks #1 of 46 years

Historical mean 1982 1997 2015 2023 2024 2025 2026 Historical range 1981–2025 (45 yrs)

Surface Warming

+0.75°C

1980 → 2026 at the surface (1m)

Signal Depth

2000m
warming exceeds 2× the 1940–1969 natural variability down to this depth

1km Turning Point

1996
first year the 1km layer turned anomaly-positive and stayed there

How to read this: Each band is the daily min–max range across 1981–2025; the dashed line is the historical mean; the purple line is 2026. Reference years are each individually color-coded — 1982 (grey, a cool early-record year), 1997 (teal, peak of the original super El Niño), 2015 (gold) and 2023 (red), peaks of prior strong El Niño events, 2024 (orange, the hottest year on record), and 2025 (light grey, the immediate predecessor). 2026 is tracking along the upper edge of the 45-year envelope, running with or just above 2025 — the global ocean surface sitting at the hottest end of everything observed in the satellite era. Parsed from Climate Reanalyzer's underlying JSON and drawn server-side.

How to read this: one column per year (1940–2026), one row per depth (surface at top, 5km at bottom). Color is temperature anomaly vs. IAP/CAS's 1981–2010 baseline, on the SAME scale at every depth — a warming surface and a barely-moving deep ocean are directly comparable. Sampled each July (the anomaly is already deseasonalized, so one consistent month carries no seasonal bias). Years before 1970 draw on sparser XBT/ship-based coverage and are shown at reduced opacity.

ⓘ methodology & sources

Series parsed from Climate Reanalyzer's undocumented daily-SST JSON (the page itself is Highcharts-rendered). First trajectory-type indicator; sea-ice and Niño 3.4 envelopes reuse the same renderer.

SOURCE · climate_reanalyzer_sst_trace SOURCE · IAP/CAS · CHENG ET AL.

OCEAN HEAT CONTENT

CURRENT

Latest observation: 2026-03-31
179d old · fetched 2026-09-26

Source

Depth

Hemisphere

Upper-ocean heat anomaly above the 1955–2006 baseline

Ocean Heat Anomaly

242.2ZJ

≈ 404 yrs of global energy use

zettajoules (10²¹ J) above 1955–2006 baseline

+11.1 ZJ / YR

past decade · 1955–2006 baseline

NH / SH DIVERGENCE

+1.6 ZJ

Northern Hemisphere accumulating faster

Southern Hemisphere is ~81% ocean — it buffers heat more efficiently, so divergence signals asymmetric planetary warming.

RATE OF ACCUMULATION · ZJ PER YEAR BY DECADE

+1.5 ZJ/yr1955–1980

+1.7 ZJ/yr1980–2000

+6.9 ZJ/yr2000–2015

+7.6 ZJ/yr2015–present

ⓘ methodology & sources

NCEI/NOAA quarterly mean heat content anomaly relative to the 1955–2006 baseline. Upper ocean (0–700 m): available 1955–present; stores roughly half of all excess planetary heat. Deep ocean (700–2000 m): derived series (0–2000 m minus 0–700 m); available from 2005 when the Argo float array reached full coverage. The 700–2000 m layer is a slow, near-irreversible store representing committed warming regardless of future emissions. 1 ZJ = 10²¹ J. Source: NOAA/NCEI · Levitus et al.

SOURCE · NCEI · NOAA/NESDIS · LEVITUS ET AL.

Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential

CURRENT

Latest composite

through 2026-09-09

Heat available at depth to fuel hurricane rapid intensification — not just surface temperature

Gulf of Mexico

83.6 kJ/cm²

D26 (26°C isotherm): 60.0 m

Above rapid-intensification threshold

Atlantic MDR

55.5 kJ/cm²

D26 (26°C isotherm): 58.1 m

Above rapid-intensification threshold

Rapid-Intensification Threshold

50 kJ/cm² · Shay, Goni & Black (2000)

2026-09-09 · Gulf 83.6 · MDR 55.5 kJ/cm²

Gulf of Mexico Atlantic MDR RI threshold (50 kJ/cm²)

ⓘ methodology & sources

NOAA/NESDIS Satellite Ocean Heat Content Suite (SOHCS), NCEI THREDDS (no auth). TCHP is the integral of ocean heat content from the surface to the depth of the 26°C isotherm (D26) — the layer of warm water a hurricane can churn up before reaching cooler water that saps its intensity. AOML's own experimentally-labeled "TCHP" product is unmaintained (confirmed stalled since 2026-01); this card instead uses NESDIS's operationally-maintained `ohc` field, which shares the identical physical definition and units (kJ/cm²) — same metric, actively updated source. Rapid-intensification threshold (~50 kJ/cm²) is a widely cited operational rule of thumb (Shay, Goni & Black 2000), not a hard physical cutoff. Weekly-sampled since Jan 2024 from rolling 14-day satellite-altimetry + Argo composites, ~5-6 day publication lag. Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic MDR boxes match the Argo card's own regional callouts exactly.