Hoegh-Guldberg is of Danish and Irish ancestry and is a direct descendant and namesake of Ove Høegh-Guldberg, a politician in late 18th Century Denmark.

[5] In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg published a paper[6] using data from CSIRO and Germany predicting that most corals across the planet will not survive the next century, and the Great Barrier Reef will die in 20–30 years.

[16][17] On 8 October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C, of which one of the findings was that we may have less than 12 years to avoid a temperature rise of over 1.5 °C.

[20] Ove Hoegh-Guldberg has been featured in the media throughout his career, including two segments on Australian Story, The Heat Of The Moment (2009)[21] and Into Hot Water (2017),[22] and an interview on NPR's All Things Considered.

[25][26] Hoegh-Guldberg has received opposition from some climate deniers in the media, notably conservative columnist Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun.

[27][28] Hoegh-Guldberg wrote an article in response in 2011 countering these claims, saying Bolt has made fundamental scientific errors and is deliberately ignoring evidence.

"[30] The scientific consensus on coral reef bleaching and the effect of climate change is overwhelming,[31][32][33] and studies with evidence to the contrary have been found to be flawed.

[34] In March 2019, Hoegh-Guldberg was named one of the world's top 100 most influential people in climate policy by Apolitical, joining natural historian David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, former United States of America vice-president Al Gore and many others.