Gulf of Finland Year 2014 - Assessment
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GULF OF FINLAND YEAR 2014 - ASSESSMENT GOF Year 2014 Team Contents 1 General features of hydrography in the Gulf of Finland .......................................... 3 1.1 Data used in this assessment ..................................................................................... 4 1.2 Drivers of the physics of the Gulf of Finland ........................................................ 4 1.2.1 Weather and climate ............................................................................................ 5 1.2.2 Precipitation ............................................................................................................ 8 1.2.3 River runoff .............................................................................................................. 9 1.2.4 Ice conditions in the Gulf of Finland in 1996 - 2014 ............................. 12 1.2.5 Sea level .................................................................................................................. 15 1.3 Monitoring and indicators of hydrography ....................................................... 18 1.4 Gulf of Finland assessment period 1996 - 2014 in perspective ................ 18 2 Changes in stratification ................................................................................................... 19 3 Halocline development ..................................................................................................... 21 4 Near bottom salinity changes ......................................................................................... 21 5 Deep-water oxygen conditions ...................................................................................... 24 6 Dynamic features of the Gulf of Finland ..................................................................... 27 7 Wave climate in the Gulf of Finland 2014 .................................................................. 29 8 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 30 9 Nutrient loading and eutrophication ........................................................................... 31 9.1 Eutrophication (vs. nutrient loading) in the Baltic Sea and in the Gulf of Finland in recent decades (short literature overview) ............................................. 31 10 Distribution and trends of N and P ............................................................................... 33 10.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 34 10.2 Data providers .......................................................................................................... 34 10.3 DIN and DIP as trophic indices .......................................................................... 34 10.4 Spatial approach ...................................................................................................... 35 10.5 Spatial distributions of DIN and DIP ................................................................ 36 10.5.1 East-West section: offshore regions“Offshore Middle”and“Offshore West” 36 10.5.2 East-West section:“Finnish Coast Outer” and “Finnish Coast Eastern” ................................................................................................................................... 36 10.5.3 East-West section: “Estonian Coast Inner”and “Narva Bay” .............. 36 10.5.4 North-South section: “Estonian Coast Inner” and “Estonian Coast Outer” 37 1 10.5.5 North-South section: “Finnish Coast Inner” and “Finnish Coast Outer” 37 10.6 The current DIN and DIP fields .......................................................................... 38 10.7 Long-term trends of DIN and DIP ..................................................................... 38 10.8 DIN and DIP: relation to the existing environmental targets ................ 41 10.9 DIN/DIP ratio............................................................................................................ 42 11 Distribution and trends of chlorophyll a and surface blooms ........................... 54 11.1 Material and methods ........................................................................................... 54 11.2 Spatial distributions of chlorophyll a in late summers ............................ 56 11.3 Trends.......................................................................................................................... 57 11.3.1 Chlorophyll trends ............................................................................................. 57 11.4 Trends in algal bloom indices ............................................................................ 59 11.5 Areal comparison of chlorophyll a relative to its environmental targets 59 11.6 References.................................................................................................................. 72 12 Oxygen indicator assessment using results from an autonomous profiling buoy .................................................................................................................................................... 74 12.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 74 12.2 Autonomous profiling buoy ................................................................................ 75 12.3 Method ........................................................................................................................ 75 12.4 References.................................................................................................................. 76 2 1 General features of hydrography in the Gulf of Finland Responsible: Pekka Alenius (FMI) Co-authors: Kai Myrberg (SYKE), Oleg Korneev (RSHU), Urmas Lips (MSI TUT) This hydrographical assessment of the Gulf of Finland describes the state and development of the basic physical (hydrographic in oceanographic meaning) features of the Gulf of Finland in 1996 – 2014 including the Gulf of Finland Years 1996 and 2014. Special emphasis is given to the conditions in 2014. The Gulf of Finland is topographically a direct continuation of the Baltic Sea proper. There are no physical boundaries that separate the gulf from the rest of the Baltic Sea. The Gulf of Finland is defined to begin from the line between city of Hanko in Finland and Osmussaar island in Estonia. This definition gives the Gulf a surface area of roughly 30.000 km2. The average depth of the Gulf is 35 m and the water volume around 1040 km3. The largest depth is over 110 m in the South-Western Gulf. The geographical nature of the gulf is very different on its southern coast and northern cost. On the southern side there are some larger islands, but on the northern side the coastal waters are full of smaller islands. In the Eastern Gulf, there are some large islands as well. The islands and archipelago have great influence on the dynamics of the Gulf as do also the overall topography and shapes of the coastlines. Especially the big islands and half-peninsula near Tallinn, Estonia have an important effect of the conditions in the central western Gulf of Finland. The eastern end of the Gulf of Finland receives the largest single freshwater inflow to the Baltic Sea from the river Neva. There are also some other large rivers flowing to the gulf, but their runoffs are much smaller than that of Neva. The physical properties of the water masses change continuously along the gulf. The long-term mean circulation is anti-cyclonic with eastward flow at the southern coast and westward flow in the northern gulf. This simplified description is based on the prevailing wind direction that is from southwest and on the earth rotation that favours this type of circulation. The true circulation is much more variable and depends on the prevailing wind conditions. The stability of the current, which means the ratio between vector mean speed and scalar average speed, varies throughout the year and is generally less than 50%. Thus we can say, that though there is an long term average anti-clockwise transport of a couple of cm/s, the substances released to the gulf may spread very widely along the gulf in longer time periods. Modelling studies (Andrejev & Myrberg, 2013) have indicated that the water exchange in the western gulf is larger than in the big eastern basin of the gulf. This means that the age of the water particles in a certain spot is larger in the 3 eastern basin than in the western gulf. This again suggests that the changes in hydrographic features are more rapid in the western gulf than in the eastern basin. One hydrographic feature that is of great importance to the biology and environmental conditions of the gulf is the horizontal extent and vertical thickness of the anoxic bottom boundary layer. This anoxic water comes from the Baltic Sea Proper and extends to the east as long as the depth is large enough. The vertical overturning in the spring and autumn may mix the waters down to the bottom if the density gradient is not too big in the bottom layer. There are a lot of areas in the western gulf where the depth is such that the anoxic saline water layer is rather thin and may remain completely unobserved if no bottom samples are taken. The layer thickness is often less than 5 meters and thus it remains below the standard CTD observations. 1.1 Data used in this assessment We have mostly used the official Gulf of Finland Year dataset in this assessment. The dataset