Geographia Polonica (2000) vol. 73, iss. 2

Climatic and oceanographic conditions in the southern Baltic area under an increasing CO2 concentration

Mirosław Miętus

Geographia Polonica (2000) vol. 73, iss. 2, pp. 89-98 | Full text

Abstract

The large-scale atmospheric sea-level pressure field over Europe and the North Atlantic has been downscaled by means of canonical analysis or redundancy analysis to some local climatic and oceanographic fields on the Polish coast of the Baltic Sea. These local fields are: wind at coastal stations; the wave field on the southern Baltic; air temperature on the coast; and salinity in the coastal zone. Scenarios concerning the future evolution of the local systems have been developed using results of some numerical experiments with GCMs, e.g. ECHAM1/LSG transient, ECHAM3 time-slice and ECHAM4/OPYC3 transient. Some significant changes should be expected, e. g. a continuation of the presently-observed rise in sea level with its alternation when the CO2 concentration triples, a slow increase in mean windspeed (especially in its zonal components), an increase in windspeed variability, an increase in the range of variability in wave height, a continuation of the observed trend for air temperature with alternation of this process during winter and a slow decrease of salinity in the coastal zone and open sea.

Keywords: statistical downscaling, climatic scenario, sea level, wave height, wind, air temperature, salinity, Baltic Sea, Polish coast