The challenge of baltic sea level change

Abstract

Baltic Sea level variability is caused by different climatic and geological factors that render their understanding more difficult than for other areas of the Earth. Yet this understanding is crucial to predict with reliability the sea-level rise in the Baltic Sea that will be brought about by anthropogenic climate change. We illustrate this complexity by a few, in our opinion, important questions that ultimately are related to the estimation of long-term trends in the presence of land crust movements, to the heterogeneity of the Baltic sea-level response to atmospheric forcing, and the difficulty of identifying a sea-level rise acceleration in the observed records.