Spatial patterns of the wave climate in the Baltic Proper and the Gulf of Finland

We make an attempt to consolidate results from a number of recent studies into spatial patterns of temporal variations in Baltic Sea wave properties. The analysis is based on historically measured and visually observed wave data, which are compared with the results of numerical hindcasts using both simple fetch-based one-point models and contemporary spectral wave models forced with different wind data sets. The focus is on the eastern regions of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland for which long-term wave data sets are available. We demonstrate that a large part of the mismatches between long-term changes to wave properties at selected sites can be explained by the rich spatial patterns in changes to the Baltic Sea wave fields that are not resolved by the existing wave observation network. The spatial scales of such patterns in the open sea vary from >500 km for short-term interannual variations down to about 100 km for long-term changes.