IPCC’s words matter — and so does the ocean

Words matter. That’s why the words that appear in reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are so carefully discussed and debated. As a result, the IPCC’s reports often land on the side of sounding nuanced or overly cautious. Which is why a small section in the current summary of the IPCC report on adaptation and mitigation stands out for its stark, plain-spoken warning:

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” the report states. “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

Before this window closes, we need to understand the 70 percent of the planet covered by the ocean if we are going to blunt the worst effects of climate change. This will require something Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation (NSF), describes as movement “at speed and scale.” The momentum to make the ocean more transparent requires a coordinated commitment by academia, industry, government and the nonprofit sector to develop new, more comprehensive and less expensive observing systems.

This is not easy, nor is it something we can put off to the future. The ocean has already absorbed roughly 90 percent of the excess heat produced by human activity since the dawn of the Industrial Age, and we can already see the effects of that excess heat on our planet’s life-support system. It is reshuffling ecosystems in ways that threaten the ocean’s food web — including parts that feed humans, as important fisheries decline or move poleward.

Unable to migrate, coral reefs that support 25 percent of marine species and the livelihoods of nearly one billion people, are dying at record pace. Rising ocean heat is contributing to intensification of extreme weather events, even far from the coast. It also drives sea-level rise by melting glaciers and causing seawater to expand, leading to the loss of natural habitats and infrastructure that protect shorelines and coastal cities home to about 40 percent of global population.

Making the measurements we need to support policy decisions is complicated by the fact that the ocean is difficult to observe and monitor. The ocean is immense across its breadth and depth and constantly changing. It is also physically punishing to the sensitive instruments we use. In addition, unlike the atmosphere, the ocean is almost entirely opaque to satellites, which means we have to go out onto — and into — the ocean to get the information we need.

But where there is difficulty, there is also opportunity.

New tools to observe and monitor the ocean, such as those developed for the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative and the multi-agency Argo program, could be leveraged to support the blue economy, a fast-growing sector worth an estimated $373 billion and supporting 2.3 million jobs in 2018 in the U.S. alone. The demand for faster, cheaper ocean observing technologies combined with data flowing from a comprehensive ocean observing system will create new markets, especially in those that quantify risk and uncertainty. Improved ocean data would also bolster national security by supporting our armed forces’ ability to make more informed strategic and tactical decisions on and in the ocean.

Enhanced monitoring and observing capabilities are essential as we turn increasingly to the ocean for help stemming the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations through a growing list of possible ocean-based carbon dioxide removal strategies. Expansion of mangroves and sea grass, seaweed cultivation, iron fertilization, as well as seafloor carbon storage are just a few of the ideas that might help reduce our projected impacts on the planet and mitigate the disproportionate impact unchecked climate change will have on developing nations. But we have to ensure that our attempts to stave off the worst of climate change do not incur any unintended consequences. 

Thanks to our growing knowledge of the ocean, we already have a host of tools to help us better predict our climate future. Broadening our understanding of the ocean will help refine models and create new insights we need to make decisions in this rapidly closing window of opportunity.

Words matter, but so do actions. How we respond to the far-reaching threats posed by climate change will matter, not only to us, but to the generations that follow on this ocean planet.

Peter de Menocal is the president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass.

Margaret Leinen is director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and vice chancellor for Marine Sciences and dean of the School of Marine Sciences at the University of California San Diego.