Abstract

Abstract. Based on the Baltic Earth Assessment Reports of this thematic issue in Earth System Dynamics and recent peer-reviewed literature, current knowledge of the effects of global warming on past and future changes in climate of the Baltic Sea region is summarised and assessed. The study is an update of the Second Assessment of Climate Change (BACC II) published in 2015 and focuses on the atmosphere, land, cryosphere, ocean, sediments, and the terrestrial and marine biosphere. Based on the summaries of the recent knowledge gained in palaeo-, historical, and future regional climate research, we find that the main conclusions from earlier assessments still remain valid. However, new long-term, homogenous observational records, for example, for Scandinavian glacier inventories, sea-level-driven saltwater inflows, so-called Major Baltic Inflows, and phytoplankton species distribution, and new scenario simulations with improved models, for example, for glaciers, lake ice, and marine food web, have become available. In many cases, uncertainties can now be better estimated than before because more models were included in the ensembles, especially for the Baltic Sea. With the help of coupled models, feedbacks between several components of the Earth system have been studied, and multiple driver studies were performed, e.g. projections of the food web that include fisheries, eutrophication, and climate change. New datasets and projections have led to a revised understanding of changes in some variables such as salinity. Furthermore, it has become evident that natural variability, in particular for the ocean on multidecadal timescales, is greater than previously estimated, challenging our ability to detect observed and projected changes in climate. In this context, the first palaeoclimate simulations regionalised for the Baltic Sea region are instructive. Hence, estimated uncertainties for the projections of many variables increased. In addition to the well-known influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation, it was found that also other low-frequency modes of internal variability, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, have profound effects on the climate of the Baltic Sea region. Challenges were also identified, such as the systematic discrepancy between future cloudiness trends in global and regional models and the difficulty of confidently attributing large observed changes in marine ecosystems to climate change. Finally, we compare our results with other coastal sea assessments, such as the North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment (NOSCCA), and find that the effects of climate change on the Baltic Sea differ from those on the North Sea, since Baltic Sea oceanography and ecosystems are very different from other coastal seas such as the North Sea. While the North Sea dynamics are dominated by tides, the Baltic Sea is characterised by brackish water, a perennial vertical stratification in the southern subbasins, and a seasonal sea ice cover in the northern subbasins.

Highlights

  • In this study, the results concerning the climate change of the various articles of this thematic issue, the so-called Baltic Earth Assessment Reports (BEARs) coordinated by the Baltic Earth programme and other relevant literature, are summarised and assessed

  • The year 2013 was chosen as a starting point for the oldest publications because earlier material was already included in the last assessment by the BACC II Author Team (2015)

  • We focus on changes in means, extremes, trends, and decadal to multidecadal climate variability

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Summary

Introduction

The results concerning the climate change of the various articles of this thematic issue, the so-called Baltic Earth Assessment Reports (BEARs) coordinated by the Baltic Earth programme (https://baltic.earth, last access: 15 February 2022; Meier et al, 2014) and other relevant literature, are summarised and assessed. In. Overview The BACC and BEAR projects Summary of BACC I and BACC II key messages Baltic Sea region characteristics Climate variability in the Baltic Sea region A unique brackish water basin The Baltic Sea – a specific European sea Global climate change Atmosphere Surface air temperature Precipitation Cryosphere Ocean Sea level Water temperature and salinity Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Marine biosphere Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 Methods Assessment of the literature Proxy data, instrumental measurements, and climate model data Past climate Present climate Future climate Uncertainty estimates Current state of knowledge Past climate change Key messages from previous assessments New palaeoclimate reconstructions Holocene climate evolution The past millennium Present climate change Atmosphere Large-scale atmospheric circulation. An important indicator of advancing climate change in the Baltic Sea region is that two of the latest six ice winters have been extremely mild (2015–2020). The winter of 2020 was even milder, with a MIB of only 37 000 km, and the lowest value in a time series that began in 1720

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