Current trends in climate change lead to higher ocean temperatures and acidity, thus modifying marine ecosystems. Also, acid rain and polluted runoff from agriculture and industry change the oceans chemical composition. Such changes can have dramatic effects on highly sensitive ecosystems such as coral reefs, thus limiting the oceans ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere on a regional scale and reducing oceanic biodiversity globally.
The exchanges of carbon between the atmosphere and other components of the Earth system, collectively known as the carbon cycle, currently constitute important negative (dampening) feedbacks on the effect of anthropogenic carbon emissions on climate change. Carbon sinks in the land and the ocean each currently take up about one-quarter of anthropogenic carbon emissions each year.
These feedbacks are expected to weaken in the future, amplifying the effect of anthropogenic carbon emissions on climate change. The degree to which they will weaken, however, is highly uncertain, with Earth system models predicting a wide range of land and ocean carbon uptakes even under identical atmospheric concentration or emission scenarios. Arctic methane emissions indirectly caused by anthropogenic global warming also affect the carbon cycle and contribute to further warming.