“The ocean is the main driver of our climate system,” German climatologist Hans-Otto Pörtner told me. One of the central functions of the ocean, Pörtner said, is to redistribute heat from the tropics toward the poles via deep currents like the Gulf Stream system, which begins in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and flows across the equator, up to the Arctic, and back again. “Even small changes in that system can have large impacts on things like the size and intensity of storms, rainfall patterns, sea-level rise,” said Pörtner, “and of course the habitats of all the creatures that live in
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