BEAR and EN CLIME processes underway...

One of the goals of Baltic Earth when it inherited BALTEX, was the assessment of the current state of the science in different research fields in the Baltic Earth context, similar to the BACC approach for climate change. Now, 7 years after the establishment of Baltic Earth, 3 international conferences, 26 workshops/seminars/sessions and 6 summer schools later, a series of extensive assessment reports, called BEAR (Baltic Earth Assessment Reports), is underway. For each of the Baltic Earth Grand Challenges, a team of experts from the Baltic Earth network is now collecting information and reading publications to wrap together the current state of knowledge in the respective research fields, including uncertainties and gaps in knowledge.

A special case of the BEAR reports is the assessment of regional climate change and its impacts. This report will be an update to BACC II, which had been published as a book in 2015. Three discrete but cohesive papers will make up the new BACC III report (atmospheric models, ocean models and climate change and its impacts), adding new knowledge and possibly challenge old knowledge, while summarizing but not repeating the valid information from BACC II.

As for the previous two BACC books, there is a close collaboration with HELCOM, the intergovernmental organization for the protection of the marine environment of the Baltic Sea. Baltic Earth scientists collaborate in the expert network on climate (EN Clime) which elaborates a climate change fact sheet for the Baltic Sea.

The peer reviewed BEAR reports are expected to be published in late 2021, as a special issue in Earth System Dynamics.

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