The United Nations has said that Greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are destabilizing oceans, leading to more intense super storms, increased deadly heat waves and record losses of polar sea ice.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a report issued in Monaco on Wednesday that the future warming will lead to a host of catastrophic impacts and turn extreme floods that have inundated some coastal cities and island nations every 100 years into an annual occurrence.

“These effects are likely to happen whether climate heating emissions are curbed or not in coming decades, while many millions more of people living in coastal communities – including Ireland face more extreme flooding and sustained sea level rise,” reads pat of the report.

According to the report, worse impacts will hit without urgent action to cut fossil fuel emissions, including an eventual sea level rise of more than four meters this century in the worst case, they conclude, noting this outcome would redraw the map of the world and harm billions of people.

The assessment of the climate crisis in the world’s oceans and ice caps concludes melting permafrost and dwindling marine life are inevitable as oceans are crumbling under an onslaught of needless stressors from over fishing to pollution, compounded by climate breakdown.

In contrast it outlines how marine environments in a healthy state could help reduce the worst effects of global heating.

This report is the first to specifically address the impacts of a warming world on the Earth’s oceans and “cry sphere” the parts of the planet that are covered in ice, such as glaciers, permafrost and sea ice.