A coral reef in the northern part of the lagoon of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, February 24, 2026. MARINE GACHET/AFP
The ocean keeps getting warmer. Its vast stretches have reached an average surface temperage of just over 21°C, according to provisional data, mainly collected from satellite information, made available by the European Copernicus program on Tuesday, March 31. The figure is nearly 0.5°C higher than the average estimated between 1993 and 2022 by the program's marine service, which is operated by the scientific organization Mercator Ocean International. In the United States, the University of Maine, relying on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), reported similar preliminary estimates: 21.12°C on March 31, just behind the 21.16°C recorded at the end of March 2024 and 0.57°C over the average between 1991 and 2020.
"These data show that we are at an exceptionally high global temperature level, very close to the records of 2024," within a few hundredths of a degree, noted Thibault Guinaldo, an oceanographer at the CNRM meteorological research unit, a joint project of the Météo-France national weather service and the CNRS national scientific research center. The overheating is even more pronounced in certain oceanic regions such as the Gulf of Mexico, the South Atlantic or the tropical oceans. Anomalies exceeding +1.5°C were also recorded in some areas of northeastern Europe.
