WHAT WAS CLAIMED
An ocean temperature decrease between 2013-2022 proves global warming is a hoax.
OUR VERDICT
Misleading. The claim is based on cherry-picked data and evidence shows global warming is real.
AAP FACTCHECK - A small decrease in ocean temperatures over eight years does not disprove global warming, despite claims being made online.
A graph based on data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that shows global ocean temperature data from 2014 to 2022 is being used as evidence to undermine the science of climate change.
While the graph indicates a 0.02C decrease over the period, long-term data shows a clear warming trend.
The claim appears in a Facebook post from July 20, 2025.
"A study of ocean temperatures from 2013-2022 is another nail in the coffin of global warming," its caption reads.
"The UN climate hoax continues without shame despite examples like this: There's no global warming & never will be. It's past time to bring this $178 trillion renewable swindle to an end."
The post includes a graph using NOAA global ocean sea surface temperature anomaly data from January 2014 to June 2022.
AAP FactCheck was unable to replicate the exact graph using NOAA's global time series tool to produce a -0.02 degree trend over a decade, as demonstrated in the post, but the dataset does show decreases over certain periods.
Moninya Roughan, an oceanography expert at the University of New South Wales, told AAP FactCheck the dates in the post had been cherry-picked.
While ocean warming data shows dips and troughs, Professor Roughan explained temperatures have still gone up on average for many of the past decades.
The same NOAA dataset shows a significant increase in temperatures since records began in 1850.
Meric Srokosz, a professor at the UK's National Oceanography Centre, previously told AAP FactCheck temperatures don't rise in a linear fashion due to various sources of natural variability.
Parts of the Pacific Ocean experienced three consecutive years of La Nina events from 2020 to 2023, which had a cooling effect on ocean temperatures, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.
Prof Roughan also noted that the graph in the social media post stops in 2022, just before an acceleration in warming.
Data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service shows that annual average ocean surface temperatures in 2023 and 2024 were the hottest on record.
Annalisa Bracco, a professor of oceanography at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said year-to-year fluctuations might explain why 2023 and 2024 were so high, as the world experienced a warming El Nino event.
Fluctuations could not, however, explain why they were much warmer than 1997, which was another El Nino year, Dr Bracco said.
A NOAA spokesperson noted that sea surface data contributes only part of "ocean temperature", which includes water temperature at deeper levels.
John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St Thomas, previously told AAP FactCheck oceans are warming "at the surface as well as throughout the depth well below 2000m".
Three different datasets for the total amount of heat stored by oceans - from NOAA, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, and the Japan Meteorological Agency - show a warming trend globally.
Scientific consensus is that the earth's climate is changing due to human activities and greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report concluded it was "unequivocal" that human influence has warmed the earth's atmosphere, land and ocean (page 4).
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