The BACC Blog: Baltic Earth is launched!

Monday, 17 June 2013

Baltic Earth is launched!

Baltic Earth is the name of the programme which is to succeed BALTEX. The continuity in basic research fields, structure (secretariat, conferences, publications) and the network (people and institutions) is symbolised by the clearly recognizable logo, being very similar to the BALTEX logo, but still distictly different.

Baltic Earth stands for the vision to achieve an improved Earth system understanding of the Baltic Sea region. This means that the research disciplines of BALTEX continue to be relevant, but a more holistic view of the Earth system encompassing processes in the atmosphere, on land and in the sea as well as in the antroposphere shall gain in importance in Baltic Earth relative to BALTEX. Specific grand research challenges are currently being formulated which represent interdisciplinary research questions to be tackled by the new programme in the coming years. A major means will be scientific assessments of particluar research topics by expert groups, similar to the BACC approach, which shall help to identify gaps and inconsistencies in the current knowledge.

A detailed presentation of Baltic Earth will be available shortly on the BALTEX and of course on the new Baltic Earth website (in preparation)!

Find news and infos on the 7th Study Conference on BALTEX at www.baltex-research.eu.

Markus Meier (SMHI), Marcus Reckermann (International BALTEX Secretariat) and Anna Rutgersson (Uppsala University) uncover the new logo in the presence of The King of Sweden.

1 comment:

Hans von Storch said...: This was a great conference, and a well-done change from the old guard of BALTEX people to a much younger guard of young colleagues interested in the broader topic of the regional Earth system of the Baltic Sea catchment. Many of the previous chair people and others instrumental for the success of BALTEX were present and recognized by a BALTEX award.
Without the BALTEX secretariat under the directorship of Marcus Reckermann and Silke Köppen, Sabine Hartmann and Sabine Billerbeck such an impressive event would not have been possible. Thanks to all!; 17 June 2013 at 20:36

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BACCground

The BACC Blog is an open platform to exchange views and comments about the BACC project (BALTEX and Baltic Earth Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin).

The regional climate change assessment report for the Baltic Sea basin was published in January 2008 (BACC Author Team, 2008). The assessment is an example for a type of urgently needed reports helping to put global climate change (as portrayed e.g. by the IPCC reports) into a regional perspective, which local stakeholders and politicians can relate to. The so called BACC (BALTEX Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin) report was compiled by a consortium of 84 scientists from 13 countries around the Baltic Sea and covers various disciplines related to climate research and ecological impacts. The book is divided in chapters on past and current climate change, on projected future anthropogenic climate change, and on observed and projected impacts on terrestrial and marine ecosystems of the Baltic Sea basin. It aims to bring together consolidated (published) knowledge which has broad consensus in the scientific community. Still, this consensus may at times take the form of “consensus on dissensus”, as for certain issues, contrary opinions cannot be resolved due to insufficient scientific evidence.

An update to this first book (BACC II), authored by 141 authors from 12 countries, was published in early 2015.