Adaptation to climate change: Regional scenarios for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea

The German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (Deutsche Anpassungsstrategie - DAS) provides the political framework for climate change adaptation in Germany and lays the foundation for a continuous process aimed at preparing for the impacts of climate change and reducing climate-related risks.

The DAS core service „Climate and Water“ provides monitoring and climate projection data to assess adaptation needs related to climate change. The service comprises both tailored advisory support and the ongoing provision of climate projection and observational data. The data is delivered through standardized workflows and are tailored to user-specific requirements.

Here the focus is on data for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, including their German coastal regions. So far, sea surface temperature observational data for the last 30 years and various climate variables from climate projections are available via the “DAS Climate Data Coast” application (https://das.bsh.de). This data comes from different sources: Global sea level projections from the IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6) were adapted to regional vertical land motion conditions for different SSPs decadal until 2150. Extreme sea level, sea surface and bottom temperature and sea surface and bottom salinity are available from a regional climate ocean projection ensemble based on atmospheric forcing from five members of the EURO-CORDEX CMIP5 ensemble. The simulations were calculated for a thirty-year ”historical” period (1971-2000), a thirty-year ”near future” period (2031-2060) and one for the ”far future” (2071-2100) for the RCP8.5 scenario.

The service is designed to respond to the evolving needs of users engaged in climate change adaptation along the German coasts. This is achieved through biennial stakeholder workshops and regular updates of the available climate data. Planning is already underway for the next regionalized model runs based on the EURO-CORDEX CMIP6 climate projections. In addition, the service is continuously expanded with new climate variables and up-to-date observational datasets.