The World’s Oceans Are in Danger, Major Climate Change Report Warns

WASHINGTON — Earth’s oceans are under severe strain from climate change, a major new United Nations report warns, threatening everything from the ability to harvest seafood to the well-being of hundreds of millions of people living along the coasts.

The warming world is disrupting aquatic life and
ocean patterns, with dire global consequences.

Rising temperatures are contributing to a drop in fish populations in many regions, and oxygen levels in the ocean are declining while acidity levels are on the rise, posing risks to important marine ecosystems, according to the report issued Wednesday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders in policymaking.

In addition, warmer ocean waters, when combined with rising sea levels, threaten to fuel ever more powerful tropical cyclones and floods, the report said, further imperiling coastal regions and worsening a phenomenon that is already contributing to storms like Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston two years ago.

Read the story from The New York Times by Brad Plumer - “The World’s Oceans Are in Danger, Major Climate Change Report Warns.”

Learning about geoengineering

Climate geoengineering refers to large-scale schemes for intervention in the earth’s oceans, soils and atmosphere with the aim of reducing the effects of climate change, usually temporarily.

Learn more about what is happening and what is proposed from Geoengineering Monitor.

The Arctic dilemma

The football field-size CCGS Amundsen, breaking through the icy waters of the Northwest Passage, came to a halt. Traversing one of the most unexplored regions of Earth’s oceans, the Canadian coast guard vessel found itself amid ice 10 feet thick. It reversed course, turned 30 degrees, and proceeded forward again, trembling along the way.

This icebreaker’s objective was to carry scientists into little-charted seas high in the Canadian Arctic. There they planned to map regions of the seafloor at high resolution and pull up a sample that could reveal what happened here at the close of the last ice age, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

But the dilemma the scientists on this vessel faced had less to do with ancient history than the near future. By helping to map a region that’s only now becoming navigable, thanks to climate change, they’re part of a broader opening of one of Earth’s most untouched environments to a growing volume of ship traffic.

Read The Washington Post story - “The Arctic dilemma.”