Reconstructions of marine environmental conditions and scenarios for future changes

Long-term changes of environmental conditions are fundamentally important for many sectors in the maritime industry. Observational evidence from which such long-term changes may be reliably derived is often limited. Here we briefly illustrate the present situation and present an approach on how quasirealistic environmental models can be used in combination with existing data to reconstruct recent long-term changes and to derive scenarios of future developments. We concentrate on variables of primary importance for the maritime industry, namely wind-storms, wind-waves and storm surges. Examples are provided for the North Sea area.