For an ecosystem that covers 70 percent of the planet, oceans get no respect.
All they’ve done is feed us, provide most of the oxygen we breathe, and protect us from ourselves: Were it not for the oceans, climate change would have already made Earth uninhabitable.
How?
The oceans have gamely absorbed more than 90 percent of the warming created by humans since the 1970s, a 2016 report found. Had that heat gone into the atmosphere, global average temperatures would have jumped by almost 56 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).
But as vast as the seas are, there is a limit to how much they can absorb, and they are beginning to show it. Today, on World Oceans Day, Human Nature examines some of the ways that climate change affects life in the oceans — and what that means for humanity.