The basic parameters of climate science are not under debate, but there is plenty of uncertainty in the field.

It's true, there's wide agreement among scientists that the planet is warming at unprecedented rates because of people's use of fossil fuels. But there's still a tremendous amount that researchers don't understand, and until those alleyways of uncertainty are narrowed, our efforts to reduce warming and prepare for a transforming planet could be hindered, scientists said.

The pace of climate change — and if it could leap in nonlinear spikes — is one of the most important questions being studied by scientists today. Another grapples with better understanding the impacts of steadily rising carbon dioxide emissions on Earth, and everything on it.

Many of the signs are troubling. Researchers are predicting potential levels of sea-level rise, 5 feet or more in some areas, that would transform life in many of the coastal cities that power the world's economy. Drought, flooding and increased extreme weather could force millions of people to move from their home. Entire regions, such as the Arctic, have already been changed dramatically by global warming. More alterations are coming.

And yet, there are certain aspects of climate science with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization where we need to reduce our uncertainty, according to researchers. Here are some of them. This list, by no means exhaustive, was formulated after talking with scientists who recently published research on these topics.

Clouds

Cloud cover could contribute to global warming or reduce it. Scientists aren't sure yet, said Roger Davies, a professor of climate physics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He said scientists are still uncertain about how cloud characteristics, including their thickness, brightness and height, may contribute to climate change, or not. Clouds could be a major factor in determining the uncertainty around the future rate of climate change, he said.

"The more cloud cover you've got, the more you reflect sunlight, so it's a cooling mechanism. So if you can get climate change to kick in where you get more clouds, you'd actually have a bit of negative feedback there where you'd actually get the extra clouds helping to cool," he said. But, he added, "the more high clouds you've got, the more warming you get."

Davies and a team of researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have examined more than a decade's worth of data but have concluded that more research is needed to reach any firm conclusions. He expects that could take at least another 15 years of data to establish firm connections. One reason for that is the slow process of ocean warming, which can have a significant influence over cloud cover.

Ocean acidification

Researchers' understanding of how climate change is transforming oceans and making them more acidic is relatively new, said Francis Chan, a research professor at Oregon State University. In the last decade or so, the science has blossomed and researchers now know that the ocean's chemistry is changing. The implications for the commercial fishing industry are significant, he said. Major changes have already been observed in key species, and others could face threats, like the loss of food with increased concentration of carbon.

It's already affecting some of the species that we eat, by thinning the shells of oysters and Dungeness crabs and even making it harder for salmon to orient themselves in the ocean, he said. At the same time, it has benefited kelp and phytoplankton, smaller pieces of the ocean food web. Scientists are still trying to determine which ocean species could be the first victims of climate change and acidification, he said. Scientists are adding more ocean species every week to the list of those that are vulnerable.

"There are a lot of things in the ocean, and some of them are going to be losers, but some might be winners," Chan said. "It's hard to project exactly how the future ocean will look in terms of the ecosystem around it. We're trying to zero in on a more accurate projection, and it's a little dismal."

Precipitation

Water is a resource that determines whether large swaths of the globe are able to support humanity. Climate change could dramatically alter life in some parts of Earth, such as economically fragile African countries along the Sahara desert or parts of India now facing extreme drought.

Climate change tweaks the extremes of precipitation and drought, making both more likely. Evidence suggests that very heavy rains are getting heavier and that dry spells are getting longer, said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

But the current climate models are lacking when it comes to predicting future precipitation, he said. That is partially a problem of data. Researchers have not been able to incorporate hourly data from current storms into their modeling for the future, he said. However, in recent years, researchers have gained access to hourly data from precipitation gauges around the world, and that has improved modeling. Still, Trenberth said that people haven't focused enough on the unreliability of current precipitation modeling, which can provide an essential peek into the future for an essential resource.

"How often it rains and how intense it rains when it rains, those are both big factors in floods and droughts," he said. "The extremes in precipitation and the models are extremely bad at those things, it's really quite embarrassing."

Interactions between ice sheets and oceans

A number of recent studies have shown an alarming trend emerging in our understanding of ice sheet melting, which is that it could be happening more quickly than we realize, particularly in Antarctica. The southern continent holds 60 percent of the world's fresh water locked in ice. It's more than a mile thick in some places. Scientists studying the ice sheets are concerned that they may be more unstable than once thought.

Studying ice flow is an essential area for future research, said Jonathan Kingslake, a glaciologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who spoke from Greenland after a month of field research studying meltwater on the surface of glaciers. He said researchers need to better understand how the ocean and the ice sheets are interacting, particularly because oceans could be causing sheets to thin more quickly than previously believed. Scientists need to better understand the balance of snow and ice and where ice sheets are separating from land. That could have a significant effect on climate change, he said.

"It's really crucial because it's that flow, does it speed up, does it slow down? It actually should be interesting to people ... because that is the thing that is moving the ice out toward the ocean," he said.

"It's a huge contributor to that negative side of the equation, the one that counterbalances all the snow falling. Without the ice flowing, the ice sheet would just grow and grow and we'd actually end up with much lower sea level," Kingslake said. "That flow is a crucial part of the whole system."

Greenland glacial melt

The Arctic is affected by warmer water and hotter surfaces. But there is much about the region that scientists would like to understand better. Glaciers are a big one. Researchers need to know more about how they calve and how they break apart when they touch the ocean, said Eric Larour, a climate researcher at NASA's Joint Propulsion Laboratory. They also want to learn more about how warmer oceans might affect that calving, he said.

That includes gaining a better understanding of the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, he said, and tracking where warmer oceans will affect the glaciers. Climate scientists are still struggling to predict how adding more heat into the system will affect ocean currents.

"This whole interaction between hydrology, the water, the ice and the climate melt, the temperature itself that melts the snow at the top of the ice, that is something we are not currently able to model and verify against historical time periods, so that's an issue," he said.