A multitude of geophysical processes contribute to and determine variations and changes in the height of the Baltic Sea water surface. These processes act on a broad range of characteristic spatial and timescales ranging from a few seconds to millennia. On very long timescales, the northern parts of the Baltic are uplifting due to the still ongoing visco-elastic response of the Earth to the last deglaciation, and mean sea level is decreasing in these regions. Over centuries, the Baltic Sea responds to changes in global and North Atlantic mean sea level. Processes affecting global mean sea level, such as warming of the world ocean or melting of glaciers and of polar ice sheets, do have an imprint on Baltic Sea levels. Over decades, variations and changes in atmospheric circulation affect transport through the Danish Straits connecting the Baltic and North seas. As a result, the amount of water in the Baltic Sea and the height of the sea level vary. Similarly, atmospheric variability on shorter timescales down to a few days cause shorter period variations of transport through the Danish Straits and Baltic Sea level. On even shorter timescales, the Danish Straits act as a low pass filter, and high frequency variations of the water surface within the Baltic Sea such as storm surges, wind waves, or seiches are solely caused internally. All such processes have undergone considerable variations and changes in the past. Similarly, they are expected to show variations and changes in the future and across a broad range of scales, leaving their imprint on observed and potential future Baltic Sea level and its variability.
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Baltic Sea Level: Past, Present, and Future
Ralf Weisse and Birgit Hünicke
Article
Climate Change and Baltic Sea Genetic Diversity
Kerstin Johannesson
Up until the beginning of the previous millennium, threats to the environment were mostly local and hence less difficult to combat. In the early 21st century, a large human population and high and increasing demands of energy, food, and other resources have led to a global climate crisis affecting nearly all life on Earth, biodiversity, and human societies alike. How will such a dramatic environmental shift affect the ecosystems? The Baltic Sea ecosystem is an interesting example in this respect, as it includes a dramatic environmental shift, starting from a freshwater lake but 8,000 years ago turning into a marine (brackish) sea with initially somewhat higher salinity than in the early 21st century. Marine populations of species that colonized the brackish water basin had to tolerate or adapt to one third their original salinity, lower density of the water, no regular tides, winter ice, and generally colder waters. Overall, these were dramatic environmental changes of magnitudes and rates of change similar to what is predicted from contemporary global environmental changes, including climate change. Indeed, the Baltic Sea is a “Darwinian laboratory” that can be explored to understand the role of plasticity, genetic variation, genetic structure and architecture, and demography using the sharp footprints of both phenotypic and genetic changes of organisms that survived this rapid environmental shift. What is observed is firstly that many marine species outside did not make it into the Baltic Sea, but among those that were successful, almost all (among the >30 studied macrospecies) show large genetic changes due to genetic drift and directional selection. The latter show that adaptation to a strong environmental shift is possible over a relatively short period of time for some species. Among successful survivors were species with very large population sizes and thus large standing genetic variation. In some species, hybridization contributed to increased levels of genetic variation. Only very few macroscopic species show evidence of recent adaptation following new mutations, while this was common among microbes. Reduced rates of recombination among genes through chromosomal inversions enable local adaptation, and it certainly supported the establishment of at least a handful of Baltic populations of species. Cloning, is also overrepresented among Baltic populations, and there may be several reasons for this. Cloning conserves suitable genotypes in marginal environments, and it also supports efficient range expansion in species that under sexual reproduction would require two individuals (one female and one male) to arrive close together after migration into a new spot. Being in an enclosed sea, the Baltic populations of largely cold water–adapted species are now facing the next large challenge—a much more rapid warming than elsewhere in the oceans.
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Climate Change and Coastal Processes in the Baltic Sea
Tarmo Soomere
Various manifestations of climate change have led to complicated patterns of reactions of the Baltic Sea shores to varying hydrodynamic drivers. The northern and western bedrock and limestone coasts of this young water body experience postglacial uplift that is faster than the global sea-level rise. These coastal segments are thus insensitive with respect to changes in hydrodynamic forcing. Sedimentary and easily erodible coasts of the westernmost, southern, and eastern shores of this water body evolve under the impact of relative sea-level rise, changing wave properties and gradual loss of sea ice in conditions of chronic deficit of fine sediment.
Several classic features of coastal processes, such as the cut-and-fill cycle of beaches, are substantially modified in many coastal sections. Waves approaching the shore systematically at large angles drive massive alongshore sediment transport in many coastal segments. This transport has led to the development of large sand spits and many relict lakes separated from the sea by coastal barriers. The concept of closure depth is reinterpreted because of frequent synchronization of strong waves and elevated water levels.
The gradual loss of sea ice cover endangers most seriously coastal systems around the latitudes of the Gulf of Finland (about 60°N). The combined influence of climatically controlled sea-level rise and intense wave action leads to a gradual increase in eroding sections and the acceleration of coastal retreat on the southern downlifting shores of Poland and Germany. The bidirectional wind forcing has created a delicate balance of sediment on the shores of Latvia and Lithuania. This balance is vulnerable with respect to changes in strong wind directions. The sedimentary shores of Estonia host a number of small beaches that are geometrically protected against typical strong wind directions but are sensitive with respect to storms from unusual directions. Numerical analysis of sediment transport patterns along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea has identified major changes in the wave directions in the Baltic Proper that can be attributed to manifestations of climate change.
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Climate Change and Offshore Wind Energy in the Baltic Sea
Xiaoli Guo Larsén, Anna Rutgersson, Farid Karimi, Bernhard Lange, Erik Nilsson, Tija Sīle, Andrea N. Hahmann, Matti J. Koivisto, Nicolaos A. Cutululis, Kaushik Das, Jana Fischereit, Stefan Wenau, Cathy Suo, and Jake Badger
Wind energy is becoming an essential part of the energy system in the Baltic Sea region (BSR). There has been a tremendous development of offshore wind energy in the early 21st century in this region, and the plan for further growth in the coming years is ambitious. The development and implementation of offshore wind energy is a complex process involving many physical and sociopolitical aspects. These aspects have their own characteristics in the BSR. Therefore, they have their unique impact and constraints on the regional development and implementation of the strategic energy technology (SET) plans. This includes implementing next-generation wind turbine technology, offshore wind farms and system integration, floating offshore wind and wind energy industrialization, wind energy operation, maintenance and installation, ecosystems, social impact and human capital agendas, and basic wind energy sciences.
Climate change is an important issue to address in relation to future development. Among the questions that may arise are: How would climate change affect the wind resource, extreme wind, and several meteorological and oceanic variables relevant to the offshore wind energy sector? What does this effect imply for the development of offshore wind energy in the BSR?
It is encouraging to acknowledge that there have been numerous relevant, good quality, pertinent studies on the subject of the BSR, and many more are ongoing. It is also inspiring to see that in the wind energy sector, there are already many technologies, methods, and tools that are sufficiently mature, and many of them, together with lessons learned through studies in other offshore regions, can be applied to support the urgent and extensive scale development of offshore wind in the BSR.
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Climate Change Impacts on Cities in the Baltic Sea Region
Sonja Deppisch
While not all projected climate change impacts are affecting especially and directly at all the cities of the Baltic Sea region (bsr), including its basin, those cities expect very different direct as well as indirect impacts of climate change. The impacts are also a matter of location, if the city with its built structures and concentration of population is located in the northern or southern part of this basin, or more inland or directly at the coast. As there are many different definitions in use trying to determine what a city is, also in the different national contexts of the bsr, here it is cities in the sense of being human-dominated densely populated areas, which are also characterized by higher concentrations of built-up areas, infrastructure, and soil-sealing as well as socioeconomic roles than rural settlements are. Those characteristics render cities also especially vulnerable to climate change impacts while there are some opportunities arising too.
There are many studies on climate change impacts on the Baltic Sea itself as well as on the various ecosystems, but the studies on the observed as well as potential future impacts of climate change on cities are disperse, many are also of a national character or concentrating on a small number of cases, leaving some cities not well studied at all. This renders an all-encompassing picture on the cities within the bsr difficult and even more complicated as every city provides a mix of built-up and open structures, of socioeconomic structure and role in a region, nation-state, or even on an international level, and further characteristics. Their urban development is dependent on manifold various interdependencies as well as climatic and nonclimatic drivers, such as, to name just a few diverse examples, urban to international governance processes, or topography and location, or also different socioeconomic vulnerabilities within the Baltic Sea basin. Accordingly every urban society and structure provides specific exposure, vulnerabilities, and adaptive capacity. Generally, the cities of the bsr have to deal with the impacts of temperature rise, natural hazards, and extreme events, and, depending on location and topography, with sea-level rise. With reference to temperature rise and the increase of heat waves, it is important to consider that cities of a certain size within the Baltic Sea basin contribute to their own urban climatic conditions and provide already urban heat islands. Also, urban planning and building facilitated by local political decisions contribute to the extent of urban floods as well as their damage, as these are regulating, for example, the sealing of soils or new built-up areas in flood-prone zones.
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Climate, History, and Social Change in Sweden and the Baltic Sea Area From About 1700
Sven Lilja
The growing concern about global warming has turned focus in Sweden and other Baltic countries toward the connection between history and climate. Important steps have been taken in the scientific reconstruction of climatic parables. Historic climate data have been published and analyzed, and various proxy data have been used to reconstruct historic climate curves. The results have revealed an ongoing regional warming from the late 17th to the early 21st century. The development was not continuous, however, but went on in a sequence of warmer and colder phases.
Within the fields of history and socially oriented climate research, the industrial revolution has often been seen as a watershed between an older and a younger climate regime. The breakthrough of the industrial society was a major social change with the power to influence climate. Before this turning point, man and society were climate dependent. Weather and short-term climate fluctuations had major impacts on agrarian culture. When the crops failed several years in sequence, starvation and excess mortality followed. As late as 1867–1869, northern Sweden and Finland were struck by starvation due to massive crop failures.
Although economic activities in the agricultural sector had climatic effects before the industrial society, when industrialization took off in Sweden in the 1880s it brought an end to the large-scale starvations, but also the start of an economic development that began to affect the atmosphere in a new and broader way. The industrial society, with its population growth and urbanization, created climate effects. Originally, however, the industrial outlets were not seen as problems. In the 18th century, it was thought that agricultural cultivation could improve the climate, and several decades after the industrial take-off there still was no environmental discourse in the Swedish debate. On the contrary, many leading debaters and politicians saw the tall chimneys, cars, and airplanes as hopeful signs in the sky. It was not until the late 1960s that the international environmental discourse reached Sweden. The modern climate debate started to make its imprints as late as the 1990s.
During the last two decades, the Swedish temperature curve has unambiguously turned upwards. Thus, parallel to the international debate, the climate issue has entered the political agenda in Sweden and the other Nordic countries. The latest development has created a broad political consensus in favor of ambitious climate goals, and the people have gradually started to adapt their consumption and lifestyles to the new prerequisites.Although historic climate research in Sweden has had a remarkable expansion in the last decades, it still leans too much on its climate change leg. The clear connection between the climate fluctuations during the last 300 years and the major social changes that took place in these centuries needs to be further studied.
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The Development of Climate Science of the Baltic Sea Region
Anders Omstedt
Dramatic climate changes have occurred in the Baltic Sea region caused by changes in orbital movement in the earth–sun system and the melting of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. Added to these longer-term changes, changes have occurred at all timescales, caused mainly by variations in large-scale atmospheric pressure systems due to competition between the meandering midlatitude low-pressure systems and high-pressure systems. Here we follow the development of climate science of the Baltic Sea from when observations began in the 18th century to the early 21st century. The question of why the water level is sinking around the Baltic Sea coasts could not be answered until the ideas of postglacial uplift and the thermal history of the earth were better understood in the 19th century and periodic behavior in climate related time series attracted scientific interest. Herring and sardine fishing successes and failures have led to investigations of fishery and climate change and to the realization that fisheries themselves have strongly negative effects on the marine environment, calling for international assessment efforts. Scientists later introduced the concept of regime shifts when interpreting their data, attributing these to various causes. The increasing amount of anoxic deep water in the Baltic Sea and eutrophication have prompted debate about what is natural and what is anthropogenic, and the scientific outcome of these debates now forms the basis of international management efforts to reduce nutrient leakage from land. The observed increase in atmospheric CO2 and its effects on global warming have focused the climate debate on trends and generated a series of international and regional assessments and research programs that have greatly improved our understanding of climate and environmental changes, bolstering the efforts of earth system science, in which both climate and environmental factors are analyzed together.
Major achievements of past centuries have included developing and organizing regular observation and monitoring programs. The free availability of data sets has supported the development of more accurate forcing functions for Baltic Sea models and made it possible to better understand and model the Baltic Sea–North Sea system, including the development of coupled land–sea–atmosphere models. Most indirect and direct observations of the climate find great variability and stochastic behavior, so conclusions based on short time series are problematic, leading to qualifications about periodicity, trends, and regime shifts. Starting in the 1980s, systematic research into climate change has considerably improved our understanding of regional warming and multiple threats to the Baltic Sea. Several aspects of regional climate and environmental changes and how they interact are, however, unknown and merit future research.
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The Development of Fish Stocks and Fisheries in the Baltic Sea Since the Last Glaciation
Henrik Svedäng
The fish fauna of the Baltic Sea reflects its 9 KY history of Arctic and temperate conditions and is a mixture of species that have invaded from the Atlantic and the continental watersheds. In spite of the challenging environmental conditions, such as low salinity in the entire Baltic Sea and varying temperature conditions, limiting the possibilities for successful reproduction, the number of species is comparably high.
Except for the Baltic Ice Lake and certain stages of the cold Yoldia Sea and freshwater Ancylus Lake, the fish fauna of the Baltic Sea, as recorded by archaeological and historical notes, has to a large extent remained unchanged. Some freshwater and cold-water species such as Arctic char may have disappeared while others, such as fourhorned sculpin and eelpout, have adapted and persist as “ice age relicts.” There are few viable introductions of novel species; the round goby may be the most conspicuous invasive species. The extinction rate is still low; the loss of sturgeon and the common skate within the HELCOM (the Helsinki Commission) area is due to fishing, and, for the riverine sturgeon, due to damming.
Since the formation of the Baltic Sea, fishing has played an essential role in supplying coastal settlements and their hinterlands and in trading. The archaeological and historical records have indicated fishing conducted with varying intensity using different methods.
Herring fishing has been a significant economic driver from the Middle Ages onward. Recent archaeological findings indicate that organized fishing was established at the outer archipelagos along the present Swedish east coast on predominately herring and cod archipelagos for self-sufficiency shortly before or during the Viking Age, and later to engage in barter.
The fact that the cod abundance has sometimes been sufficient for letting cod fishing be the most important fishery in the northern Baltic Proper alongside the fishery on herring may indicate that the eastern cod stock had relatively high productivity even when the Baltic Sea was significantly less eutrophic than it has been since the mid-20th century. This preindustrial variability in cod abundance suggests that climatic changes leading to changes in inflows of oceanic water may have affected salinity levels in the Baltic Sea.
Fisheries show substantial variability, especially over the last century. Fish production may have increased due to nutrient enrichment of the Baltic Sea. Higher yields have also been obtained due to higher fishing intensity and technological changes. Fishing has, therefore, become a major driver in shaping fish stocks.
The eutrophication of the Baltic Sea, leading to higher primary productivity and increasing water temperature and reductions in ice cover, may have led to changes in ecosystem structure and productivity. It should be underscored that such changes may also be amplified by the increasing fishing pressure on the cornerstone species such as herring, leading to significant disruptions in the food web.
Article
Effects of Climate Change and Fisheries on the Marine Ecosystem of the Baltic Sea
Christian Möllmann
Climate change and fisheries have significantly changed the Baltic Sea ecosystem, with the demise of Eastern Baltic cod (Gadus morhua callarias) being the signature development. Cod in the Central Baltic Sea collapsed in the late 1980s as a result of low reproductive success and overfishing. Low recruitment and hence small year-classes were not able to compensate for fishing pressures far above sustainable levels. Recruitment failure can be mainly related to the absence of North Sea water inflows to the Central Baltic deep basins. These major Baltic inflows (MBIs) occurred regularly until the 1980s, when their frequency decreased to a decadal pattern, a development attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns. MBIs are needed for ventilation of otherwise stagnating Baltic deep waters, and their absence caused reduced oxygen and salinity levels in cod-spawning habitats, limiting egg and larval survival. Climate change, on the other hand, has promoted a warmer environment richer in zooplanktonic food for larval Baltic sprat (Sprattus sprattus). Resulting large year-classes and low predation by the collapsed cod stock caused an outburst of the sprat stock that cascaded down to the zoo- and phytoplankton trophic levels. Furthermore, a large sprat population controlled cod recruitment and hence hindered a recovery of the stock by predation on cod eggs, limiting cod larval food supply.
The change in ecosystem structure and function caused by the collapse of the cod stock was a major part and driver of an ecosystem regime shift in the Central Baltic Sea during the period 1988 to 1993. This reorganization of ecosystem structure involved all trophic levels from piscivorous and planktivorous fish to zoo- and phytoplankton. The observed large-scale ecosystem changes displayed the characteristics of a discontinuous regime shift, initiated by climate-induced changes in the abiotic environment and stabilized by feedback loops in the food web. Discontinuous changes such as regime shifts are characteristically difficult to reverse, and the Baltic ecosystem recently rather shows signs of increasing ecological novelty for which the failed recovery of the cod stock despite a reduction in fishing pressure is a clear symptom. Unusually widespread deficient oxygen conditions in major cod-spawning areas have altered the overall productivity of the population by negatively affecting growth and recruitment. Eutrophication as a consequence of intensive agriculture is the main driver for anoxia in the Baltic Sea amplified by the effects on continuing climate change and stabilized by self-enforcing feedbacks. Developing ecological novelty in the Baltic Sea hence requires true cross-sectoral ecosystem-based management approaches that truly integrate eutrophication combatment, species conservation, and living resources management.
Article
Future Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region and Environmental Impacts
Jouni Räisänen
The warming of the global climate is expected to continue in the 21st century, although the magnitude of change depends on future anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the sensitivity of climate to them. The regional characteristics and impacts of future climate change in the Baltic Sea countries have been explored since at least the 1990s. Later research has supported many findings from the early studies, but advances in understanding and improved modeling tools have made the picture gradually more comprehensive and more detailed. Nevertheless, many uncertainties still remain.
In the Baltic Sea region, warming is likely to exceed its global average, particularly in winter and in the northern parts of the area. The warming will be accompanied by a general increase in winter precipitation, but in summer, precipitation may either increase or decrease, with a larger chance of drying in the southern than in the northern parts of the region. Despite the increase in winter precipitation, the amount of snow is generally expected to decrease, as a smaller fraction of the precipitation falls as snow and midwinter snowmelt episodes become more common. Changes in windiness are very uncertain, although most projections suggest a slight increase in average wind speed over the Baltic Sea. Climatic extremes are also projected to change, but some of the changes will differ from the corresponding change in mean climate. For example, the lowest winter temperatures are expected to warm even more than the winter mean temperature, and short-term summer precipitation extremes are likely to become more severe, even in the areas where the mean summer precipitation does not increase.
The projected atmospheric changes will be accompanied by an increase in Baltic Sea water temperature, reduced ice cover, and, according to most studies, reduced salinity due to increased precipitation and river runoff. The seasonal cycle of runoff will be modified by changes in precipitation and earlier snowmelt. Global-scale sea level rise also will affect the Baltic Sea, but will be counteracted by glacial isostatic adjustment. According to most projections, in the northern parts of the Baltic Sea, the latter will still dominate, leading to a continued, although decelerated, decrease in relative sea level. The changes in the physical environment and climate will have a number of environmental impacts on, for example, atmospheric chemistry, freshwater and marine biogeochemistry, ecosystems, and coastal erosion. However, future environmental change in the region will be affected by several interrelated factors. Climate change is only one of them, and in many cases its effects may be exceeded by other anthropogenic changes.
Article
Geological, Paleoclimatological, and Archaeological History of the Baltic Sea Region Since the Last Glaciation
Jan Harff, Hauke Jöns, and Alar Rosentau
The correlation of climate variability; the change environment, in particular the change of coastlines; and the development of human societies during the last millennia can be studied exemplarily in the Baltic area. The retreat of the Scandinavian ice-sheet vertical crustal movement (glacio-isostatic adjustment), together with climatically controlled sea-level rise and a continuously warming atmosphere, determine a dramatic competition between different forcings of the environment that advancing humans are occupying step by step after the glaciation. These spatially and temporally changing life conditions require a stepwise adjustment of survival strategies. Changes in the natural environment can be reconstructed from sedimentary, biological proxy data and archaeological information. According to these reconstructions, the main shift in the Baltic area’s environment happened about 8,500 years before present (BP) when the Baltic Sea became permanently connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Danish straits and the Sound, and changed the environment from lacustrine to brackish-marine conditions. Human reaction to environmental changes in prehistoric times is mainly reconstructed from remains of ancient settlements—onshore in the uplifting North and underwater in the South dominated by sea-level rise. According to the available data, the human response to environmental change was mainly passive before the successful establishment of agriculture. But it became increasingly active after people settled down and the socioeconomic system changed from hunter-gatherer to farming communities. This change, mainly triggered by the climatic change from the Holocene cool phase to the warming period, is clearly visible in Baltic basin sediment cores as a regime shift 6,000 years (BP). But the archaeological findings prove that the relatively abrupt environmental shift is reflected in the socioeconomic system by a period of transition when hunter-gatherer and farming societies lived in parallel for several centuries. After the Holocene warming, the permanent regression in the Northern Baltic Sea and the transgression in the South did affect the socioeconomic response of the Baltic coastal societies, who migrated downslope at the regressive coast and upslope at the transgressive coast. The following cooling phases, in particular the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) and the Little Ice Age (LIA), are directly connected with migration and severe changes of the socioeconomic system. After millennia of passive reaction to climate and environmental changes, the Industrial Revolution finally enabled humans to influence and protect actively the environment, and in particular the Baltic Sea shore, by coastal constructions. On the other hand, this ability also affected climate and environment negatively because of the disturbance of the natural balance between climate, geosystem, and ecosystem.
Article
History and Future of Snow and Sea Ice in the Baltic Sea
Matti Leppäranta
The physics of the ice season in the Baltic Sea is presented for its research history and present state of understanding. Knowledge has been accumulated since the 1800s, first in connection of operational ice charting; deeper physics came into the picture in the 1960s along with sea ice structure and pressure ridges. Then the drift of ice and ice forecasting formed the leading line for 20 years, and over to the present century, ice climate modeling and satellite remote sensing have been the primary research topics. The physics of the Baltic Sea ice season is quite well understood, and toward future ice conditions realistic scenarios can be constructed from hypothetical regional climate scenarios.
The key factor in climate scenarios is the air temperature in the Baltic Sea region. The local freezing and breakup dates show sensitivity of 5–8 days’ change to climate warming by 1 °C, while this sensitivity of sea ice thickness is 5–10 cm. However, sea ice thickness and breakup date show sensitivity also to snow accumulation: More snow gives later breakup, but the thickness of ice may decrease due to better insulation or increase due to more snow-ice. The annual probability of freezing decreases with climate warming, and the sensitivity of maximum annual ice extent is 35,000–40,000 km2 (8.3%–9.5% of the Baltic Sea area) for 1 °C climate warming. Due to the large sensitivity to air temperature, the severity of the Baltic Sea ice season is closely related to the North Atlantic Oscillation.
Article
History of the Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus
Irina Danilovich, Raisa Auchynikava, and Victoria Slonosky
The first weather observations within the modern territory of Belarus go back to ancient times and are found as mentions of weather conditions in chronicles. Hydrometeorology in those times was not a defined science but connected to the everyday needs of people in different regions. In the period from 1000 to 1800, there were first efforts to document outstanding weather conditions and phenomena. They are stored in chronicles, books, and reports.
The first instrumental observations started in the early 1800s. They have varying observing practices and periods of observations. The hydrometeorological network saw the active expansion of observations in the following century, but the network was destroyed at the beginning of the civil war (1917–1922). Five years later, hydrometeorological activity resumed, and the foundation of meteorological services of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was initiated. The next years saw a complicated Belarusian hydrometeorological service formation and reorganization.
The meteorological bureau was formed in 1924, and this year is considered the official date of the Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus foundation, despite multiple changes in title and functions during its course. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) people’s courage and efforts were directed to saving the existing network of hydrometeorological observations and providing weather services for military purposes. The postwar period was characterized by the implementation of new methods of weather forecasting and new forms of hydrometeorological information. Later decades were marked by the invention and implementation of new observational equipment. The Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus in this period was a testing ground within the Soviet Union for the development of meteorological tools and devices.
The current Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus is described as an efficient, modern-equipped, and constantly developing weather service.
Article
Impacts of Climate Change on the Ecosystem of the Baltic Sea
Markku Viitasalo
Climate change influences the Baltic Sea ecosystem via its effects on oceanography and biogeochemistry. Sea surface temperature has been projected to increase by 2 to 4 °C until 2100 due to global warming; the changes will be more significant in the northern areas and less so in the south. The warming up will also diminish the annual sea ice cover by 57% to 71%, and ice season will be one to three months shorter than in the early 21st century, depending on latitude. A significant decrease in sea surface salinity has been projected because of an increase in rainfall and decrease of saline inflows into the Baltic Sea. The increasing surface flow has, in turn, been projected to increase leaching of nutrients from the soil to the watershed and eventually into the Baltic Sea. Also, acidification of the seawater and sea-level rise have been predicted.
Increasing seawater temperature speeds up metabolic processes and increases growth rates of many secondary producers. Species associated with sea ice, from salt brine microbes to seals, will suffer. Due to the specific salinity tolerances, species’ geographical ranges may shift by tens or hundreds of kilometres with decreasing salinity. A decrease in pH will slow down calcification of bivalve shells, and higher temperatures also alleviate establishment of non-indigenous species originating from more southern sea areas.
Many uncertainties still remain in predicting the couplings between atmosphere, oceanography and ecosystem. Especially projections of many oceanographic parameters, such as wind speeds and directions, the mean salinity level, and density stratification, are still ambiguous. Also, the effects of simultaneous changes in multiple environmental factors on species with variable preferences to temperature, salinity, and nutrient conditions are difficult to project. There is, however, enough evidence to claim that due to increasing runoff of nutrients from land and warming up of water, primary production and sedimentation of organic matter will increase; this will probably enhance anoxia and release of phosphorus from sediments. Such changes may keep the Baltic Sea in an eutrophicated state for a long time, unless strong measures to decrease nutrient runoff from land are taken.
Changes in the pelagic and benthic communities are anticipated. Benthic communities will change from marine to relatively more euryhaline communities and will suffer from hypoxic events. The projected temperature increase and salinity decline will contribute to maintain the pelagic ecosystem of the Central Baltic and the Gulf of Finland in a state dominated by cyanobacteria, flagellates, small-sized zooplankton and sprat, instead of diatoms, large marine copepods, herring, and cod.
Effects vary from area to area, however. In particular the Bothnian Sea, where hypoxia is less common and rivers carry a lot of dissolved organic carbon, primary production will probably not increase as much as in the other basins.
The coupled oceanography-biogeochemistry ecosystem models have greatly advanced our understanding of the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. Also, studies on climate associated “regime shifts” and cascading effects from top predators to plankton have been fundamental for understanding of the response of the Baltic Sea ecosystem to anthropogenic and climatic stress. In the future, modeling efforts should be focusing on coupling of biogeochemical processes and lower trophic levels to the top predators. Also, fine resolution species distribution models should be developed and combined with 3-D modelling, to describe how the species and communities are responding to climate-induced changes in environmental variables.
Article
Post-Glacial Baltic Sea Ecosystems
Ilppo Vuorinen
Post-glacial aquatic ecosystems in Eurasia and North America, such as the Baltic Sea, evolved in the freshwater, brackish, and marine environments that fringed the melting glaciers. Warming of the climate initiated sea level and land rise and subsequent changes in aquatic ecosystems. Seminal ideas on ancient developing ecosystems were based on findings in Swedish large lakes of species that had arrived there from adjacent glacial freshwater or marine environments and established populations which have survived up to the present day. An ecosystem of the first freshwater stage, the Baltic Ice Lake initially consisted of ice-associated biota. Subsequent aquatic environments, the Yoldia Sea, the Ancylus Lake, the Litorina Sea, and the Mya Sea, are all named after mollusc trace fossils. These often convey information on the geologic period in question and indicate some physical and chemical characteristics of their environment. The ecosystems of various Baltic Sea stages are regulated primarily by temperature and freshwater runoff (which affects directly and indirectly both salinity and nutrient concentrations). Key ecological environmental factors, such as temperature, salinity, and nutrient levels, not only change seasonally but are also subject to long-term changes (due to astronomical factors) and shorter disturbances, for example, a warm period that essentially formed the Yoldia Sea, and more recently the “Little Ice Age” (which terminated the Viking settlement in Iceland).
There is no direct way to study the post-Holocene Baltic Sea stages, but findings in geological samples of ecological keystone species (which may form a physical environment for other species to dwell in and/or largely determine the function of an ecosystem) can indicate ancient large-scale ecosystem features and changes. Such changes have included, for example, development of an initially turbid glacial meltwater to clearer water with increasing primary production (enhanced also by warmer temperatures), eventually leading to self-shading and other consequences of anthropogenic eutrophication (nutrient-rich conditions). Furthermore, the development in the last century from oligotrophic (nutrient-poor) to eutrophic conditions also included shifts between the grazing chain (which include large predators, e.g., piscivorous fish, mammals, and birds at the top of the food chain) and the microbial loop (filtering top predators such as jellyfish). Another large-scale change has been a succession from low (freshwater glacier lake) biodiversity to increased (brackish and marine) biodiversity. The present-day Baltic Sea ecosystem is a direct descendant of the more marine Litorina Sea, which marks the beginning of the transition from a primeval ecosystem to one regulated by humans. The recent Baltic Sea is characterized by high concentrations of pollutants and nutrients, a shift from perennial to annual macrophytes (and more rapid nutrient cycling), and an increasing rate of invasion by non-native species. Thus, an increasing pace of anthropogenic ecological change has been a prominent trend in the Baltic Sea ecosystem since the Ancylus Lake.
Future development is in the first place dependent on regional factors, such as salinity, which is regulated by sea and land level changes and the climate, and runoff, which controls both salinity and the leaching of nutrients to the sea. However, uncertainties abound, for example the future development of the Gulf Stream and its associated westerly winds, which support the sub-boreal ecosystems, both terrestrial and aquatic, in the Baltic Sea area. Thus, extensive sophisticated, cross-disciplinary modeling is needed to foresee whether the Baltic Sea will develop toward a freshwater or marine ecosystem, set in a sub-boreal, boreal, or arctic climate.
Article
Projected Oceanographical Changes in the Baltic Sea until 2100
H.E. Markus Meier and Sofia Saraiva
In this article, the concepts and background of regional climate modeling of the future Baltic Sea are summarized and state-of-the-art projections, climate change impact studies, and challenges are discussed. The focus is on projected oceanographic changes in future climate. However, as these changes may have a significant impact on biogeochemical cycling, nutrient load scenario simulations in future climates are briefly discussed as well. The Baltic Sea is special compared to other coastal seas as it is a tideless, semi-enclosed sea with large freshwater and nutrient supply from a partly heavily populated catchment area and a long response time of about 30 years, and as it is, in the early 21st century, warming faster than any other coastal sea in the world. Hence, policymakers request the development of nutrient load abatement strategies in future climate. For this purpose, large ensembles of coupled climate–environmental scenario simulations based upon high-resolution circulation models were developed to estimate changes in water temperature, salinity, sea-ice cover, sea level, oxygen, nutrient, and phytoplankton concentrations, and water transparency, together with uncertainty ranges. Uncertainties in scenario simulations of the Baltic Sea are considerable. Sources of uncertainties are global and regional climate model biases, natural variability, and unknown greenhouse gas emission and nutrient load scenarios. Unknown early 21st-century and future bioavailable nutrient loads from land and atmosphere and the experimental setup of the dynamical downscaling technique are perhaps the largest sources of uncertainties for marine biogeochemistry projections. The high uncertainties might potentially be reducible through investments in new multi-model ensemble simulations that are built on better experimental setups, improved models, and more plausible nutrient loads. The development of community models for the Baltic Sea region with improved performance and common coordinated experiments of scenario simulations is recommended.
Article
Projections for Temperature, Precipitation, Wind, and Snow in the Baltic Sea Region until 2100
Ole Bøssing Christensen and Erik Kjellström
The ecosystems and the societies of the Baltic Sea region are quite sensitive to fluctuations in climate, and therefore it is expected that anthropogenic climate change will affect the region considerably. With numerical climate models, a large amount of projections of meteorological variables affected by anthropogenic climate change have been performed in the Baltic Sea region for periods reaching the end of this century.
Existing global and regional climate model studies suggest that:
• The future Baltic climate will get warmer, mostly so in winter. Changes increase with time or increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a large spread between different models, but they all project warming. In the northern part of the region, temperature change will be higher than the global average warming.
• Daily minimum temperatures will increase more than average temperature, particularly in winter.
• Future average precipitation amounts will be larger than today. The relative increase is largest in winter. In summer, increases in the far north and decreases in the south are seen in most simulations. In the intermediate region, the sign of change is uncertain.
• Precipitation extremes are expected to increase, though with a higher degree of uncertainty in magnitude compared to projected changes in temperature extremes.
• Future changes in wind speed are highly dependent on changes in the large-scale circulation simulated by global climate models (GCMs). The results do not all agree, and it is not possible to assess whether there will be a general increase or decrease in wind speed in the future.
• Only very small high-altitude mountain areas in a few simulations are projected to experience a reduction in winter snow amount of less than 50%. The southern half of the Baltic Sea region is projected to experience significant reductions in snow amount, with median reductions of around 75%.
Article
Regional Climate Modeling for the Baltic Sea Region
Erik Kjellström and Ole Bøssing Christensen
Regional climate models (RCMs) are commonly used to provide detailed regional to local information for climate change assessments, impact studies, and work on climate change adaptation. The Baltic Sea region is well suited for RCM evaluation due to its complexity and good availability of observations.
Evaluation of RCM performance over the Baltic Sea region suggests that:
• Given appropriate boundary conditions, RCMs can reproduce many aspects of the climate in the Baltic Sea region.
• High resolution improves the ability of RCMs to simulate significant processes in a realistic way.
• When forced by global climate models (GCMs) with errors in their representation of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and/or sea surface conditions, performance of RCMs deteriorates.
• Compared to GCMs, RCMs can add value on the regional scale, related to both the atmosphere and other parts of the climate system, such as the Baltic Sea, if appropriate coupled regional model systems are used.
Future directions for regional climate modeling in the Baltic Sea region would involve testing and applying even more high-resolution, convection permitting, models to generally better represent climate features like heavy precipitation extremes. Also, phenomena more specific to the Baltic Sea region are expected to benefit from higher resolution (these include, for example, convective snowbands over the sea in winter). Continued work on better describing the fully coupled regional climate system involving the atmosphere and its interaction with the sea surface and land areas is also foreseen as beneficial. In this respect, atmospheric aerosols are important components that deserve more attention.
Article
Regional History of Settlement and Human Impacts in the Baltic Sea Region over the Last 2000 Years
Mika Lavento
The Baltic Sea catchment area extends from the upper course of the Elbe in the Czech Republic to northernmost Lapland where the Tornionjoki river (Sw. Torneälven = Lake Torne) marks the border between Finland and Sweden today. This article concentrates on the coastal regions of the sea and discusses a mutual dialogue between climate and man.
Oxygen isotope 18O and hydrogen isotope 2H in the layers of polar ice sheets indicate climate change in the time span of thousands, even tens of thousands, of years. In northern areas, much climatologic information is based on polar ice drilling data from Greenland.
The influence of climate changes on human subsistence is clearly visible in pollen data from the numerous ponds and swamps in the Baltic Sea coastal zone. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of carbon remains in archaeological materials (such as the crusts of ceramic pieces) are used to build detailed chronological sequences.
Human adaption to conditions dictated by nature is usually interpreted as innovation and progress in prehistory. But numerous raw materials, once used, cannot be replaced, while land exploitation is often followed by side effects such as erosion and eutrophication. For example, the Neolithic “revolution”—the beginning of crop cultivation and large-scale cattle breeding—is an example of such changes in southern Europe from ca. 6,000 bce.
Between ca. 200 bce and 100 ce, during the Early Iron Age, the climate was relatively warm here. Local iron production expanded in the Baltic Sea region and allowed effective slash-and-burn crop cultivation for the first time in prehistory. Since then, human activity has caused damage to forests all around the Baltic Sea.
A colder phase followed in 100–600 ce. Even today slight changes in annual temperature have great impact on subsistence in areas with harsh climate conditions, such as close to the Polar Circle. An abrupt and radical fall of temperature surely caused severe difficulties.
Hunter-gatherers had to find secondary food resources while societies which were strongly dependent on one single base for economy, like agriculture, had even greater difficulties. In the southern part of the Baltic Sea sphere, considerable areas of land were under cultivation at that time. Harvest failures led to famines.
A climate catastrophe, probably caused by volcanic eruption, adversely impacted urban, peasant, nomadic, and hunting populations all over the northern hemisphere in 535–536 ce. Recent archaeological studies and AMS samples have proven there was a demographic crisis in the northern part of the Baltic Sea.
Soon after 600 ce, the climate became milder again, and the following centuries were warmer than almost any period during Holocene: the warm phase from 800 to ca.1050 ce perfectly matches a historical and archaeological era: the Viking Period.
The Middle Ages and early post-medieval period were relatively mild and human-friendly times. But this was followed by the so-called Little Ice Age, dated approximately to 1275–1870. With the beginning of industrialization in mid-19th century, human impact on climate became obvious all over the globe, and the Baltic Sea region is no exception.
Article
Two Millennia of Natural and Anthropogenic Changes of the Polish Baltic Coast
Andrzej Osadczuk, Ryszard Krzysztof Borówka, and Joanna Dudzińska-Nowak
Changes of the coast are a net result of morphodynamic processes driven by changes in external conditions. Morphodynamics can be understood as feedback between shore topography and hydrodynamics, the latter including bedload transport, which alters the morphology of the coast.
The evolution of a marine coast can take various pathways depending on the time scale, shoreline length, geological setting, tectonic underpinnings, type and availability of sediments in the nearshore zone, sea level changes, intensity of waves and currents, and the influence of the adjacent land masses.
A spatio-temporal approach (processes of millennial, decadal, annual, and seasonal change) is particularly important for coastal areas built of erosion-prone, poorly consolidated glacial and postglacial deposits. This is the case of the southern Baltic Sea coast where the shore has been and continues to be impacted by geological processes, climatic factors, and anthropogenic activities. The processes involved are shaped primarily by external factors such as wind–wave action, currents, storm surges, precipitation, winter ice cover, and gravitational mass movements. The shoreline response to climate change depends on both the nature of the change and the coastal zone characteristics. Long-term climate changes result in sea level changes. The sea level rise resulting from global warming enhances coastal erosion, particularly where the shore is built by poorly consolidated rocks and deposits.
Coastal zones are usually very sensitive to all the external forces, therefore climate change will most likely be the strongest driver and will be the first to impinge on the coast, whereas the most distant changes in the oceans may produce effects delayed by decades or even centuries.