After graduating from Pomona College in 1929 with early studies in geology, he earned a PhD in oceanography from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1936.

Revelle was deeply involved in the growth of oceanography in the United States and internationally after World War II.

At Scripps he launched several major long-range expeditions in the 1950s, including the MIDPAC, TRANSPAC (with Canada and Japan), EQUAPAC, and NORPAC, each traversing a different part of the Pacific Ocean.

He and other scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography helped the U.S. government to plan nuclear weapons tests, in the hope that oceanographers might make use of the data.

Revelle was one of the committee chairmen in the influential National Academy of Sciences studies of the biological effects of atomic radiation (BEAR), the results of which were published in 1956.

During planning for the IGY, under Revelle's directorship, SIO participated in and later became the principal center for the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Program.

Hans Suess was recruited by Revelle,[6] and they co-authored a 1957 article using carbon-14 isotope levels to assess the rate at which carbon dioxide added by fossil fuel combustion since the start of the industrial revolution had accumulated in the atmosphere.

There had been little sign to date of this greenhouse effect causing the anticipated warming, but the Suess–Revelle article suggested that increasing human gas emissions might change this.

[7] Revelle told journalists about the issues and testified to Congress that "The Earth itself is a space ship", endangered by rising seas and desertification.

"[10] When at Scripps and while building UCSD, Revelle also had to deal with a La Jolla community that refused to rent or sell property to Jews.

Revelle's tactless approaches to these public battles earned him many enemies, who portrayed him to the Board of Regents as too "disorganized" to effectively lead UCSD.

[12] In his memoirs, Kerr paraphrased Revelle's response: "He spoke of how he had walked the site of the prospective campus on moonlit nights visualizing what one day might rise there in all its splendor.

In 1991, Revelle's name appeared as co-author on an article written by physicist S. Fred Singer and electrical engineer Chauncey Starr for the publication Cosmos: A Journal of Emerging Issues, titled "What to do about greenhouse warming: Look before you leap", which was published in the summer of 1992.

[13][14] The article concluded: "The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.

"[13] These particular statements and the bulk of the article, including the title, had been written and published a year earlier by S. Fred Singer as sole author.

In 2006, prompted by Robert Balling and others continuing to state that Revelle actually wrote the article, Lancaster formally withdrew his retraction and reiterated his charges.

That same year he wrote: "The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time."

A 1990 heart attack forced him to move his course to the Scripps Institution from the Revelle College provost's office, where he continued to teach the Marine Policy program until his death the following year.