English: The Baltic Sea is a semi-enclosed, brackish water body located in Northern Europe, surrounded by countries such as Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Denmark.

This schematic figure represents the general circulation of the Baltic Sea and includes surface currents, deep currents, and interactions between the two. The main surface circulation is characterised by a counterclockwise movement in the sea and the surface current due to Neva River discharging into the Gulf of Finland.

All areas deeper than 40 meters in the Baltic Proper and south of it are depicted in a separate figure below, showing the sub-halocline circulation. The deep water currents are part of the haline circulation of the sea which is limited due to the relatively small connection to the North Sea through narrow straits.The Baltic Sea receives inflows of more saline water from the North Sea through Danish Straits: the Great Belt (between Denmark and Sweden) and the Sound (between Sweden and Denmark).

The bathymetric data used to plot the figure come from Baltic Sea Bathymetry Database (BSBD) and are distributed with CC BY 3.0 Unported. Find attribution below:

Baltic Sea Hydrographic Commission, 2013, Baltic Sea Bathymetry Database version 0.9.3. Downloaded from http://data.bshc.pro/ on 3 Aug 2023