BACC, the BALTEX Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea basin, is a BALTEX project to assemble, integrate and assess available knowledge of past, current, and expected future climate change and its impacts on ecosystems in the Baltic Sea basin. The overall objective of BACC was to write an assessment book which was published by Springer in January 2008 (see book cover on the right).
The unique feature of BACC is the integrated assessment of climate change and related both marine and terrestrial ecosystem changes.
The material is structured in 5 chapters:
(1) Introduction and summary
(2) Past and current climate change
(3) Projections of future anthropogenic climate change
(4) Climate-related change in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems
(5) Climate-related marine ecosystem change
A summary of BACC results can be downloaded here.
The overall project format is similar to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), with author groups for the individual chapters, an overall summary for policy makers, and an external review process.
BACC/BALTEX has also established a joint venture with HELCOM (The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission). The BACC material has been used for a HELCOM Thematic Assessment Report on Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Area.
BACC has been initiated by Hans von Storch at Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht. He acts as chairman of the BACC Science Steering Committee.
An update to BACC is cuurently under preparation under the acronym BACC II.
