June 11, 2024
Report calls for need to provide regular data on how ocean warming is evolving and its impacts; this is needed to support the decade challenge for healthy and resilient oceans/
The oceans play a key role in regulating climate. Yet the world’s understanding is still insufficient to design solutions for multiple ocean crises and validate new technologies that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to the UNESCO State of Ocean Report.
The report highlights that it is still unclear whether deoxygenation is accelerating in response to increased OHC.
Another crisis highlighted in the report is the mean global increase in ocean acidification in all ocean basins and seas.
The report notes that longer-term data sets are needed for coastal areas than for the open ocean due to these natural variabilities. This can help determine the time of emergence of ocean acidification trends.
Sea levels continued to rise in 2023. The global mean sea level from 1993 to 2023 increased at a rate of 3.4 +/-0.3 mm/yr.
Going forward, the world will have to improve the space-based and in situ observing systems for monitoring sea level rise at global, regional, and coastal scales, the report stated.
The UNESCO report also takes stock of the recent developments in marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) technologies. This involves techniques that capture carbon dioxide from the air and store it durably.
Examples include altering the chemical composition of seawater so that oceans absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or adding nutrients such as iron to encourage the growth of microscopic plankton that can sink to the seafloor and be stored for centuries or longer.
Since 2020, it noted that there has been a surge of interest in mCDR using wide-ranging methods, which may pose many technical, environmental, political, legal, and regulatory challenges, among others.
The increased interest is due to several scientific papers on mCDR, the growing number of start-ups developing mCDR techniques, and the significant funding for mCDR research announced by the United States and the European Union in 2023.
There are still many unknowns, including the potential of using mCDR to enhance the ocean carbon sink.
Other unknowns include how they will interact with the ocean carbon cycle and whether these interactions will cause unintended consequences.
Further, the coastal ocean is witnessing an increased interest in restoring or expanding coastal blue carbon habitats such as mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and tidal saltmarshes to increase the sequestration of carbon. However, questions remain on their effectiveness, the report noted.
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