A report released on Monday by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO highlights significant gaps in understanding how the world's oceans absorb and store carbon. These deficiencies could lead to inaccuracies in current climate projections and weaken the ability to develop effective mitigation and adaptation strategies over the coming decades.

The report concludes that scientific models estimating ocean carbon uptake may differ from real-world measurements by as much as 10 to 20 percent globally, with even larger discrepancies in some regions. These inconsistencies stem from limited long-term observational data and gaps in understanding how key processes respond to a changing climate.

Such uncertainties, the authors warn, mean that climate policies are being formulated without a full picture of how the ocean will behave in the future. If the ocean's capacity to absorb carbon weakens, more carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. That, in turn, could directly affect future emissions targets and national climate plans.

The report emphasizes that strategies for carbon removal and ocean-based climate interventions must be grounded in stronger scientific evidence.

In addition to reviewing the uncertainties affecting estimates of the ocean carbon sink, the report outlines a roadmap to strengthen international cooperation, expand ocean carbon monitoring, and update climate models accordingly – with the aim of making ocean carbon science more directly relevant to climate policy decisions.