The purpose of this blog is to allow for a transparent communication about the BACC reports. BACC stands for “BALTEX Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea basin”; details are found at the BACC website (see also "Baccground" to the right). The BACC effort constitutes an important step towards an increased understanding of the role of climate change for the Baltic Basin including land and water ecosystems.
There is a BACC I and a BACC II. The former, BACC I, has been concluded, presently BACC II is prepared (see BACC II website here). The purpose of the BACC I assessment was to provide the scientific community with an assessment of ongoing climate variations in the Baltic Basin. An important element was the comparison with the historical past. Also, changes in relevant environmental systems, due to climate variations, were assessed – such as hydrological, ocean and ecosystem changes. A summary by M. Reckermann, H.-J. Isemer and H. von Storch was published in 2008 in EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. U. (p. 161-162). BACC II is the successor to BACC, which was terminated with the publication of the BACC book. The aim of BACC II is to organize and publish an updated assessment by 2014, building on and extending BACC.
We invite comments from the scientific and the general public on the finalized BACC I report, and suggestions for organizing BACC II. Also complaints about inaccurate or maybe even wrong assertions and assessments in BACC I should be published here. Lead and contributing authors can directly respond to such complaints. When logging complaints, please keep in mind that the report is about the scientifically legitimate knowledge – that is, complaints should relate to insufficient or false recognition of scientific literature available at the cut-off date at about mid 2007. Moreover, we encourage the discussion of BACC-relevant open scientific issues which may be controversial.
