Despite its vastness (71 percent of Earth’s surface), the global ocean is changing in unprecedented ways and presenting challenges to the future world community. This is the message of a September 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Authored by 104 scientists from 36 countries, the report assessed nearly 7,000 scientific publications to reach its findings about the responses of the ocean and cryosphere—places on Earth where water is in solid form—to a changing climate.
The key connection among all these complex earth systems is water. The report identifies the important linkages between the ocean and cryosphere and the climate system and highlights the implications of ocean changes for resources, ecosystems, and humans.
The report’s most consequential marine findings concern a warming ocean. It notes that it is virtually certain the ocean has warmed since 1970, has absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat in the climate system, and very likely has absorbed 20–30 percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions since the 1980s.
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