evidence: But the ocean’s buffering influence has come at a cost, with a fingerprint that is becoming ever clearer to scientists and anyone else paying attention to the natural world. [...] Hotter oceans fuel stronger hurricanes and rainier storms. But warming also has influences less obvious to humans. As the surface of the water warms, it gets lighter, making it harder to mix it with cold, nutrient-rich water below. So the top part of the ocean stagnates slightly, holding less oxygen and less of the critical nutrients that support marine life. And the carbon dioxide bleeding into the ocean is causing it to become more acidic, stressing out any organism that builds its shells out of acid-sensitive calcium carbonate, from tiny plankton to oysters to massive reef-building corals. [...] Changes in Earth’s ice also affect people who live far from the high mountains or the poles. Since the early 1900s, average sea levels around the world have risen by about 16 centimeters (just over 6 inches). Now, the report says, melt from Greenland and Antarctica, the planet’s great storehouses of ice, is the primary driver of rising sea levels around the world. Melt from those ice sheets is now responsible for over half of the sea level rise happening today—about 1.8 millimeters each year.