Abstract
The Baltic Sea Region is very sensitive to climate change; it is a region with spatially varying climate and diverse ecosystems, but also under pressure due to high population in large parts of the area. Climate change impacts could easily exacerbate other anthropogenic stressors such as biodiversity stress from society and eutrophication of the Baltic Sea considerably. Therefore, there has been a focus on estimations of future climate change and its impacts in recent research. In this review paper, we will concentrate on a presentation of recent climate projections from both atmosphere-only and coupled atmosphere-ocean regional climate models. The recent regional climate model projections strengthen the picture from previous assessments. This includes a strong warming, in particular in the north in winter. Precipitation is projected to increase in the whole region apart from the southern half during summer. Consequently, the new results lend more credibility to estimates of uncertainties and robust features of future climate change. Furthermore, the larger number of scenarios gives opportunities to better address impacts of mitigation measures. The coupled atmosphere-ocean model locally modifies the climate change signal relative to that in the stand-alone atmosphere regional climate model. Differences are largest in areas where the coupled system arrives at different sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice conditions.
Highlights
For many years, hundreds of global climate projections have been produced according to various scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions and other forcing factors including changes in aerosols and land use
This has been coordinated in model inter-comparison projects (CMIPs), that have provided fundamental input to the Working Group I assessment reports 25 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; IPCC 2001, 2007, 2013)
As only 8 general circulation models (GCMs) have been used for these RCP8.5 RCM experiments, the spread between quartiles is lower than what would have come from an exhaustive downscaling of all Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) global simulations
Summary
Hundreds of global climate projections have been produced according to various scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions and other forcing factors including changes in aerosols and land use. This has been coordinated in model inter-comparison projects (CMIPs), that have provided fundamental input to the Working Group I assessment reports 25 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; IPCC 2001, 2007, 2013). The fifth IPCC assessment report (AR5; IPCC 2013) was built on the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) multi-model data (Taylor et al, 2012). Many general circulation models (GCMs) participated in simulations according to several Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios (van Vuuren et al, 2011). GCMs do not represent all relevant processes at adequate scales and results are often biased
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