In 2025, the temperature of our planet’s oceans soared to levels unprecedented since modern measurements began, absorbing colossal amounts of thermal energy, and continuing to rise.
More than 90% of the excess heat produced by greenhouse gas emissions ends up in the oceans, meaning that our seas have become the most reliable indicator of accelerated global warming. Scientists from different international teams have documented that the heat content in the first two thousand meters of depth reached new records in 2025, easily surpassing the 2024 record and canceling out weather patterns known until just a decade ago.
What do warmer oceans mean? More energy to power storms, more water vapor available to generate torrential rains, more heat available to intensify hurricanes and typhoons. Warming seawater is closely linked to the formation of more intense and devastating tropical or Mediterranean cyclones, to extreme weather patterns that were once relatively rare, but that now seem almost routine. The ocean itself, which regulates the Earth’s climate, is ever-more fragile: less oxygen, higher salinity in certain regions, greater acidification and sustained heat stress for marine life.
We feel the consequences on dry land: from prolonged droughts and historic heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere to unprecedented flooding in traditionally temperate regions. The physics of warm water translates into extreme weather events that devastate entire communities. Warmer water masses release more moisture, intensifying rainfall and river overflows. Prolonged and historic marine heatwaves are destroying entire ecosystems, affecting coral reefs that, in the face of persistent high temperatures, suffer mass bleaching and loss of biodiversity.
The data from recent decades is unequivocal: ocean warming has broken records year after year, and not because of natural cyclical variations, but because of the secular accumulation of heat derived from human activity and the burning of fossil fuels that accompanies it. This trend is underpinned by multiple scientific studies that show the continuous increase in temperature at the surface and at great depths, even in years when phenomena such as El Niño or La Niña could have temporarily cushioned their impact.
However, while this scientific data terrifies the public and the scientific community, the political response of most elites seems to be anchored in denialism and ideological myopia. In the United States, the current administration has not only dismissed the dangers of climate change, but has made decisions that directly aggravate the crisis: withdrawal from key international treaties on climate change, dismantling scientific bodies, and actively promoting fossil fuels as a pillar of energy policy.
Worse, this agenda includes initiatives to expand oil extraction in places like Venezuela, whose crude reserves are among the densest and most polluting in the world. The exploitation of heavy crude oil not only increases carbon emissions, but also results in spills that devastate fragile ecosystems. Promises to “revive the oil industry” under the guise of jobs or energy independence do not stand up to scrutiny when scientific evidence shows that the human and ecological cost of such expansion will be sky-high.
And yet the official discourse mocks science: climate change is a “hoax”, renewable energies are “too expensive”… Any attempt at environmental regulation is portrayed as an affront to economic prosperity. Such rhetoric may sound convincing to some uninformed electorates, but it clashes head-on with the most robust scientific consensus that exists: limiting global warming requires drastic emissions reductions and a decisive transition to clean, renewable technologies.
The tragedy is not only environmental, but epistemological: at a time when the data clearly shows that every tenth of a degree matters and causes fiercer hurricanes, more severe droughts, more widespread floods and oceans that have never been so hot, Washington decides to ignore the evidence, withdraw its country from multinational efforts, and returns to a twentieth-century energy model.
Meanwhile, extreme weather events are already manifesting themselves with a frequency and intensity that challenge our ability to adapt. Ocean warming is not a distant or abstract threat: it is a tangible reality that is already reorganizing the geography of the global climate. Embracing the energy transition is not only an ecological imperative, it’s an opportunity to redesign economies, innovate in clean technologies and protect the most vulnerable communities from disasters that will become increasingly common.
History will judge harshly those who chose indifference in these critical times. Every degree of extra heat in the ocean, every devastating hurricane, every runaway rainy season is a testament that the climate crisis continues its relentless advance. The question is not whether the climate changes, but whether it changes our willingness to face it.
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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.
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Photo credit: Image by Markus Kammermann from Pixabay
