Fifth Workshop on Baltic Sea Ice Climate Hamburg, Germany

The Fifth Workshop on Baltic Sea Ice Climate was arranged in Hamburg, Germany. The hosts of the workshop were the Centre of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (ZMAW) at the University of Hamburg and the Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie (BSH), Germany. The workshop took place in the new building of ZMAW from 31, August - 2, September, 2005. The meeting reviewed research results related to the Baltic Sea ice in past, present and future climate conditions and, for the first time, built a link to other seasonally ice covered regions in the world. In contrast to the previous workshops, which were mainly devoted to Baltic Sea ice modelling and long-term time series, the fifth workshop represented a more wider spread of topics. The presentations addressed topics such as lake ice optics, sea ice remote sensing, ice dynamics, sea ice climate variations addressing several centuries, sea ice-snow interactions, sea ice microstructure and brine release, numerical modelling of sea ice and different aspects of sea ice related biology. Most of the presentations were related to the Baltic Sea, but a considerable number of presentations were dealing with sea ice problems in the Barents Sea.