United Nations agency report: Insufficient research on ocean carbon may impact climate policies.

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO recently released a report pointing out that there is a serious lack of understanding of how the oceans absorb and store carbon, which could lead to inaccuracies in current climate predictions and hinder the ability to develop effective strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the coming decades. The report, titled "Ocean Carbon Synthesis Research," suggests that scientific models estimating the amount of carbon absorbed by the oceans may differ from reality, with global differences ranging from 10% to 20%, and even larger differences in some regions. These discrepancies are due to limited long-term data and gaps in understanding how key processes respond to climate change. The report states that this indicates that climate policies are being developed without a full understanding of future changes in the oceans. If the ocean's carbon absorption capacity weakens in the future, more carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. This will directly affect future emission targets and national climate plans. Therefore, strategies for carbon removal and ocean-based climate interventions must be based on a stronger scientific evidence base. In addition to summarizing the uncertainties that affect estimates of ocean carbon sequestration, this report also lays out a roadmap for promoting international cooperation, strengthening ocean carbon monitoring, and updating climate models based on these findings, in order to enable ocean carbon science to more directly inform climate policies.