Potential Impacts of Climate Interventions on Marine Ecosystems

Abstract

Rising global temperatures pose significant risks to marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and fisheries. Recent comprehensive assessments suggest that large-scale mitigation efforts to limit warming are falling short, and all feasible future climate projections, including those that represent optimistic emissions reductions, exceed the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C or 2° warming targets during this century. While avoiding further CO₂ emissions remains the most effective way to prevent environmental destabilization, interest is growing in climate interventions—deliberate, large-scale manipulations of the environment aimed at reducing global warming. These include carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to reduce atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over time, and solar radiation modification (SRM), which reflects sunlight to lower surface temperatures but does not address root CO₂ causes. The effects of these interventions on marine ecosystems, both direct and in combination with ongoing climate change, remain highly uncertain. Given the ocean's central role in regulating Earth's climate and supporting global food security, understanding these potential effects is crucial. This review provides an overview of proposed intervention methodologies for marine CDR and SRM and outlines the potential trade-offs and knowledge gaps associated with their impacts on marine ecosystems. Climate interventions have the potential to reduce warming-driven impacts, but could also alter marine food systems, biodiversity and ecosystem function. Effects will vary by pathway, scale, and regional context. Pathway-specific impact assessments are thus crucial to quantify trade-offs between plausible intervention scenarios as well as to identify their expected impacts on marine ecosystems in order to prioritize scaling efforts for low-risk pathways and avoid high-risk scenarios.