2nd international conference: Climate change - the environmental and socio-economic response in the Southern Baltic region

Scope and rationale

It is generally accepted that remarkable progress has been achieved in understanding the climate controlling system on the global scale but also that a spatial downscaling of global processes to the regional scale is required. In a first international conference on climate change in the southern Baltic region, held in 2009 at Szczecin, planning agencies and local authorities expressed the need of future climate change projections which may be used for management and decision making on the regional and local level in order to help mitigate negative effects of climate change to the environment and society. The quality of the answers to the questions depends directly on the data available – records of measurements for the past and future projections as the results of climate modelling.

Increasing research activities are expected regarding the cause-effect relation between greenhouse gas emissions, climate and environmental responses in the Baltic Sea basin. Therefore, and to revive the productive scientific atmosphere of the conference in 2009 it was decided to organize a follow-up conference in 2014, dealing with the climate change effects for the southern Baltic region.

Sessions

The conference will highlight the topics:

• Proxies and modelling of climate change: Past and future projections
• Climate and coastal areas: (i) Natural dynamics and socio-economic development; (ii) Changing Baltic Sea coasts and their sustainable protection
• Adaption of energy politics to climate change

Timeline

2nd Announcement/Call for papers October 2013
Abstract Submission January 2014