The impact of temperature gradients on the average bit error rate (ABER) performance of low-density parity-check (LDPC)-coded underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems is investigated over the generalized gamma fading channels. The effects of absorption and scattering are also taken into account in our computation on the basis of the Monte Carlo (MC) ray-tracing method. The decoded-and-forward multihop communication is applied to extend the viable communication range of UWOC systems. In particular, using the generalized Gauss–Laguerre quadrature rule, the ABER analytical expressions of the multihop UWOC system with binary phase shift keying and multiple phase shift keying modulation schemes are mathematically derived under weak temperature-induced oceanic turbulence condition, respectively, which are also confirmed by MC simulation. In addition, LDPC codes are adopted to improve the UWOC system performance. The results reveal that the ABER performance of this multihop UWOC system degrades with increasing temperature gradients, hop numbers, and modulation orders, while it can be significantly enhanced by LDPC codes and the coding gains increase with the increase of temperature gradients and hop numbers. Our work will benefit the design and development of UWOC system.