Oceans face dire threats from climate change. They also hold answers.

Rising seas. Retreating glaciers. Thawing tundra. Acidifying oceans. 

The impacts from climate change to the Earth’s oceans and frozen regions – water and ice – are severe, and are getting worse, with potentially devastating consequences, from more frequent flooding and more severe storms to dwindling fish stocks and diminishing snowpacks. A major United Nations report released Wednesday highlights the threat to those regions – the observed changes and what we can expect in the future. 

But the ocean – while increasingly under threat – is also a source of some of the most promising solutions for mitigating carbon emissions and combating climate change. That’s the message from a less prominent U.N. report released this week, this one focused on quantifying the ocean-based solutions to climate change.