Assessing if CMIP models can detect observed climate change signals is crucial for evaluating their realism and strengthening confidence in future projections. These signals can only be compared once distinguishable from the background climate "noise." Built for impact studies but not detection purpose, the time of emergence (ToE) estimates when this occurs using a fixed signal-to-noise ratio. To more accurately assess models' ability to reproduce observed climate change signals, we introduce the time of detection (ToD), which employs a statistical significance test of the nonlinear trend, accounting for the time series length. ToD and ToE are computed for sea surface temperature (SST) and relative SST (RSST) across four observational and 69 CMIP5/6 historical and shared socioeconomic pathways 5-8.5 (SSP5-8.5) scenario datasets. ToD precedes ToE and is less sensitive to the chosen threshold. While already detectable in most of the tropics, SST warming in the equatorial Pacific is detectable in ∼90% of models but only one out of four observational datasets, due to a stronger modeled warming. Because RSST signals are weaker than SST signals, they do not emerge anywhere but are detectable in two regions. The enhanced warming in the western Indian Ocean, detected in ∼45% of models, is not robust in observations when excluding pre-1960 dubious data. Conversely, the subdued southeast Pacific warming detected in observations and ∼80% of models is robust and consistent with a poleward extension of the Southern Hemisphere Hadley cell. The ToD's ability to detect subtle signals allows for assessing the realism of the CMIP warming pattern in this region.