Model simulations find the cause of unusually high temperatures at the bottom of the Bornholm Sea

The water temperature at the bottom of the Bornholm Basin in the central Baltic Sea has risen faster in recent decades than at the surface. Warnemünde researchers have now been able to explain this unusual development with a temporal shift in the exchange of water between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. This leads—in addition to the rapid temperature increase in the surface water, which can be observed everywhere in the Baltic Sea and is due to global warming—to a temperature increase in the deep water, too. The research results have now been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.