Climate change is bad news for Baltic Sea

Liz Kalaugher in Environmental Research Web: Researchers near to the Baltic Sea have teamed up to model what climate change and other environmental problems have in store for the region's ecosystems. Their findings? At the end of the century water temperature could be higher and salinity and oxygen concentrations lower than at any time since 1850.

"Our study suggests that the future Baltic Sea ecosystem may unprecedentedly change," Markus Meier of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute and Stockholm University told environmentalresearchweb. "Even in the case of the most optimistic nutrient-load reductions following the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), an environmental status of the Baltic Sea unaffected by human impact cannot be reacquired within the coming 100 years."

Adopted in 2007, the Baltic Sea Action Plan aims to improve water quality and prevent eutrophication and algal blooms. It gives each country that neighbours the Baltic a quota for reducing nutrient load. But these quotas did not account for climate change.

"Recent research indicates that...climate change may have considerable impacts on the marine ecosystem," said Meier. "Hence we studied, in a holistic approach, the combined impacts of changing climate and changing external nutrient loads. In addition, the impacts of other drivers like fisheries were investigated."....

Hugo Knorr's 1880 painting, "Ostseestrand"