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The following photograph and description was received from Kjell Lundberg who was out at sea and observed an unusual phenomenon in the fog.

The highest observed wave in the Baltic is 14 m between crest and trough. The Finnish Institute for Marine Research registered this wave off southern Åland on 22 December 2004. The significant wave height at this time was 7.7 m. The highest wave registered off the Swedish coast is 13.0 m, again …

The rotation of the earth controls the dominant wind direction in the tropics from east to west, which in turn leads the tropical ocean currents westward. But here and there, occasionally, they mysteriously move in the opposite direction – directly eastwards.

The El Niño phenomenon is a warming of the surface water in the eastern parts of the tropical Pacific. The opposite, La Niña, is instead a cooling of the area. The phenomenon occurs in the exchange between the atmosphere and the sea, and affects the Earth’s weather conditions in several ways.

Friction dampens the movement of air and water, and this creates interesting and important water movement systems, such as the Ekman spirals, discovered in 1905.

Algae are organisms that are photosynthetic, like plants, but lack the many distinct organs of land plants. Cyanobacteria are usually also included in this group. For many years SMHI has monitored the algae situation in the seas around Sweden. The algae studied are planktonic – microscopic plants …

The type of algae found in the Skagerrak and Kattegat are often visible from satellite. Sometimes there are harmless blooms of coccolithophorids whose calcite platelets reflect sunlight to colour the sea turquoise.

This summer's bloom in the Baltic Sea was restricted to the first three weeks of July and had little effect on the Swedish coast.

Nutrient levels in surface water were normal throughout the investigated area except in the Bornholm Basin where silicate was slightly lower. In the Baltic Proper oxygen concentrations below 2 ml/l were observed at depths exceeding 40 to 80 meters and at the bottom in the eastern part of Arkona …

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