Abstract Global heating of the Earth system is unequivocal. However, detecting an acceleration of Earth heating has remained elusive to date, despite suggestive evidence of a potential increase in heating rates. In this study, we demonstrate that since 1960, the warming of the world ocean has accelerated at a relatively consistent pace of 0.15 ± 0.05 (W/m 2 )/decade, while the land, cryosphere, and atmosphere have exhibited an accelerated pace of 0.013 ± 0.003 (W/m 2 )/decade. This has led to a substantial increase in ocean warming, with a magnitude of 0.91 ± 0.80 W/m 2 between the decades 1960–1970 and 2010–2020, which overlies substantial decadal-scale variability in ocean warming of up to 0.6 W/m 2 . Our findings withstand a wide range of sensitivity analyses and are consistent across different observation-based datasets. The long-term acceleration of Earth warming aligns qualitatively with the rise in CO 2 concentrations and the decline in aerosol concentration during the same period, but further investigations are necessary to properly attribute these changes.