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Climate chronicles

Ocean heat content in 2024

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 249–251 (2025)Cite this article

Subjects

Global full-depth ocean heat content (OHC) gain since 1960 reached a record 452 ± 77 ZJ in 2024. OHC was 15 ± 9 ZJ higher than in 2023, primarily associated with warming in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Key points

  • The 0–300 m, 300–700 m, 700–2,000 m and below-2,000 m layers are responsible for 42%, 22%, 29% and 7% of total OHC accumulated since 1960, respectively.

  • OHC increased relative to 2023, with contributions of 9.9, 8.4, 2.6, –4.8 and –0.7 ZJ from the upper 2,000 m Atlantic, Indian, Southern, Pacific, and abyssal oceans below 2,000 m, respectively.

  • The most vigorous ocean warming from 2023 to 2024 occurred in the Northwest Pacific, Southwest and East Indian oceans, and the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean.

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Fig. 1: Ocean heat content (OHC) changes.

Data availability

Argo data were collected and made freely available by the International Argo Program and the national programmes contributing to it (https://argo.ucsd.edu, https://www.ocean-ops.org). The IAP/CAS (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) observation and model data are available at http://www.ocean.iap.ac.cn/. The SAM index is available from https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/marshall-southern-annular-mode-sam-index-station-based. CMIP data are available through the Earth System Grid Federation. The ERA5 reanalysis data was obtained from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/.

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Acknowledgements

L.C. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 42261134536), National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2023YFF0806500), the new Cornerstone Science Foundation through the XPLORER PRIZE; Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences; National Key Scientific and Technological Infrastructure project “Earth System Science Numerical Simulator Facility” (EarthLab). Research by K.v.S. was carried out at Mercator Ocean international, France. Z.L. was supported by the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS; ARC Grant SR200100008). A.M. was supported by the ObsSea4Clim project, “Ocean observations and indicators for climate and assessments”, funded by the European Union, Horizon Europe Funding Programme for Research and Innovation under grant agreement number: 101136548. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. The Argo Program is part of the Global Ocean Observing System.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth System Numerical Modeling and Application, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yuying Pan & Lijing Cheng

  2. Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD), Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris, France

    Audrey Minière

  3. Mercator Ocean International, Toulouse, France

    Karina von Schuckmann

  4. Centre for Marine Science and Innovation (CMSI), University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Zhi Li

  5. Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Zhi Li

  6. Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China

    Yuanlong Li

  7. State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment and Extreme Meteorology, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jiang Zhu

Authors
  1. Yuying Pan
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  2. Audrey Minière
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  3. Karina von Schuckmann
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  4. Zhi Li
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  6. Lijing Cheng
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  7. Jiang Zhu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Lijing Cheng or Jiang Zhu.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Pan, Y., Minière, A., von Schuckmann, K. et al. Ocean heat content in 2024. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 249–251 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00655-0

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