This development should not simply combine existing model components but rely on an innovative integrated model for both media. Existing approaches for regionalizing climate change in the North Sea/Baltic Sea area must be improved and extended. Of special interest are the effects of long-period variations of the NAO, the wind and wave statistics, the mean sea level

and the general circulation. Are storm surges becoming more dangerous? What changes can be expected with respect to the ecosystem and biodiversity? “
“One of the important issues in the marine sciences is to study the relationships between seawater constituents and their optical properties in different regions of world oceans and seas (Dera 1992, 2003). On the one hand, elementary optical processes

such as light absorption and scattering by different seawater constituents determine how check details sunlight is propagated and utilized in water, which has a great influence on the thermal regimes and states of marine ecosystems (Trenberth (ed.) 1992, Kirk 1994). On the other hand, armed with a knowledge of seawater optical properties, we may be able to identify the composition and concentrations of different seawater constituents. An understanding of the relations between these constituents and their optical properties is thus necessary for both the ecological and climate MK 1775 modelling of marine environments and also for establishing practical marine research methods. These interrelations are especially complicated with respect to oceanic shelf regions and also to enclosed and semi-enclosed seas, jointly described as case II waters

according to the classification by Morel & Prieur (1977). As opposed to open ocean waters (classified as case I waters and whose optical properties are relatively well studied), in water bodies classified as case II, both autogenic (e.g. phytoplankton and its degradation products) and allogenic (substances transported from land by rivers, or by wind, and substances resuspended from the sea bottom and eroded from shorelines) constituents may play an important role, and their concentrations may be uncorrelated with one another. For decades laboratory not biogeochemical analyses of discrete water samples collected at sea have been used to determine the types and concentrations of suspended and dissolved substances in seawater. But such analyses are usually laborious and time-consuming and so are difficult to apply on a large scale. Another widely used tool for the monitoring and research of oceans and seawaters is remote sensing (see e.g. Arst 2003). Performed from above the sea surface (from a ship, aircraft or earth satellite platform), these measurements are based on analyses of the remote sensing reflectance spectrum (one of the so-called apparent optical properties (AOPs)), also commonly referred to as ‘ocean colour’.