From the University of Delaware – As the ice-capped Arctic Ocean warms, ship traffic will increase at the top of the world. And if the sea ice continues to decline, a new route connecting international trading partners may emerge — but not without significant repercussions to climate, according to a U.S. and Canadian research team that includes a University of Delaware scientist.
Growing Arctic ship traffic will bring with it air pollution that has the potential to accelerate climate change in the world’s northern reaches. And it’s more than a greenhouse gas problem — engine exhaust particles could increase warming by some 17-78 percent, the researchers say.
James J. Corbett, professor of marine science and policy at UD, is a lead author of the first geospatial approach to evaluating the potential impacts of shipping on Arctic climate. The study, “Arctic Shipping Emissions Inventories and Future Scenarios,” is published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Corbett’s coauthors include Daniel A. Lack, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.; James J. Winebrake, of the Rochester Institute of Technology; Susie Harder of Transport Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia; Jordan A. Silberman of GIS Consulting in Unionville, Pa.; and Maya Gold of the Canadian Coast Guard in Ottawa, Ontario.
“One of the most potent ‘short-lived climate forcers’ in diesel emissions is black carbon, or soot,” says Corbett, who is on the faculty of UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. “Ships operating in or near the Arctic use advanced diesel engines that release black carbon into one of the most sensitive regions for climate change.”
Produced by ships from the incomplete burning of marine fuel, these tiny particles of carbon act like ‘heaters’ because they absorb sunlight — both directly from the sun, and reflected from the surface of snow and ice. Other particles released by ship engines also rank high among important short-lived climate forcers, and this study estimates their combined global warming impact potential.
To better understand the potential impact of black carbon and other ship pollutants on climate, including carbon dioxide, methane and ozone, the research team produced high-resolution (5-kilometer-by-5-kilometer) scenarios that account for growth in shipping in the region through 2050, and also outline potential new Arctic shipping routes.
Among the research team’s most significant findings:
- Global warming potential in 2030 in the high-growth scenario suggests that short-lived forcing of ~4.5 gigagrams of black carbon from Arctic shipping may increase the global warming potential due to ships’ carbon dioxide emissions (~42,000 gigagrams) by some 17-78 percent.
- Ship traffic diverting from current routes to new routes through the Arctic is projected to reach 2 percent of global traffic by 2030 and to 5 percent in 2050. In comparison, shipping volumes through the Suez and Panama canals currently account for about 4 percent and 8 percent of global trade volume, respectively.
- A Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage through the Arctic Ocean would provide a distance savings of about 25 percent and 50 percent, respectively, with coincident time and fuel savings. However, the team says tradeoffs from the short-lived climate forcing impacts must be studied.
- To calculate possible benefits of policy action, the study provides “maximum feasible reduction scenarios” that take into account the incorporation of emissions control technologies such as seawater scrubbers that absorb sulfur dioxide emitted during the burning of diesel fuel. Their scenario shows that with controls, the amount of Arctic black carbon from shipping can be reduced in the near term and held nearly constant through 2050.
“To understand the value of addressing short-lived climate forcers from shipping, you need to know the impacts of these emissions, the feasibility and availability of technologies that could be put in place to reduce these impacts, and then engage the policy-making community to debate the evidence and agree on a plan,” Corbett notes. “Our hope is that this study will enable better communication of emerging science with policy makers and aid the eight Arctic Council nations with climate policy.”
Corbett also has led recent studies to determine the global health effects of shipping, and more recently, a comparison of the daily release of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Americans’ daily energy use.
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Wow I can’t belove these people still think the ice cap is going to be gone in 20 years. And of course there’s the “we need to research this more” plug in there….
I am stunned…..
They don’t want the savings in CO2 emissions? Really? They would rather more CO2 be released into the atmosphere than let ships travel a dangerous route full of ice for a couple months a year? (for a little while at least)
File this under Fear and Misinformation. I especially like the route that goes right over the North Pole.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Sounds like a James Bond plot
“17 to 78 percent”?
Wow. Nothing like accurate numbers. These guys make economists look like soothsayers.
A big assumption is made that there will be a continuous warming of the Arctic, despite all the history that says such events are brief. We’ll see.
So let me get this straight. Using the Arctic Ocean saves 25-50% of fuel, meaning 25-50% less emissions. Yet somehow fewer emissions makes global warming worse?
Tell me this is a joke !!!!!
They like to project the harm, but none of the good. The arctic needs to clear before they need to worry about that. Perhaps the current el nina will set them back a few years.
As a ship designer, speculative assumptions aside (ongoing open water in the arctic), the conclusions sound about right. If safe, consistent routes were to open up, significant cost savings could be made.
Every now and then someone even does calculations to see how submersible shipping would compete on these routes. The numbers are not that far off being competitive, which gives a small glimpse into how much advantage there would be.
And yes, black soot absorbs a lot more heat than white ice & snow.
intuitivereason says:
October 25, 2010 at 10:57 pm
“Every now and then someone even does calculations to see how submersible shipping would compete on these routes. ”
That would be so cool – we could replace canals by big sewers.
Russia, Canada and the USA are in a race to build a fleet of nuclear powered massive ice breakers to stake their claim on the gas and oil they found up there last year.
They are going to open shipping routes, not because of global warming but because they need to build refineries and establish permanent operations up there to get to all that oil.
The BBC already had itself in knots reporting this story and trying to toe the AGW party line it was hysterical hypocrisy.
Its just so sad for science, for education, for university professionalism. What kind of study is this ? Assumption on hypothesis on innuendo on theory … and oh yes .. here is the useless answer and even more useless question. And somebody no doubt is funding this.
Hello Mike
They are saying Black Carbon is a powerful heater – about 640 times as effective as CO2 according to Dr Tami Bond (who knows a lot about PM) and that is when CO2 is highly overrated. It is after all, black. I thought they were going to say something silly about blackening the snow (etc) but they stuck to the atmospheric heating which is well documented (the Asian Brown Cloud is a hot example).
They do not mention that at night the BC radiates more powerfully. I have not seen a detailed look at what happens when the sun stays up or down for a long time. It might make winters colder and summers warmer which would be nice. It is pretty obvious that the route is not going to be open within 10 or 20 years but given a long term (geological) view, the Arctic is naturally open water part of the year.
BC has been underrated as people sought to enhance the importance of CO2. That seems to be waning and BC will probably emerge as the new CO2. It has large health consequences especially in the ultra-fine range (PM 0.020) and diesels are a heavy source of those – especially if they are modern engines. When testing improved diesels it was found that they definintely reduce the emitted mass of PM 2.5 and PM 1.0 but vastly increase the number of far smaller particles which are now detectable. More smaller particles with the same total mass = a much higher absorbing surface area.
I think most of these researchers have too much time on their hands. They really need to find a new day job. They are getting money for nothing.
What percentage of icebreaker shipping in the arctic is only there to tell us how bad the ice is?
Will these researchers be backing their research by investing in a trans arctic shipping company?
a new route connecting international trading partners may emerge
and Hell may freeze over…
Oh no, whatwegonnado! Ermmm… not take those routes? I mean, supposing that this was a problem at all. What kind of feedback is that? “As the world warms, mankind will behave worse and worse”. Pathetic.
rbateman says:
October 25, 2010 at 10:36 pm
“A big assumption is made that there will be a continuous warming of the Arctic, despite all the history that says events are brief. We’ll see.”
How many times in this history of events that are brief have we had a steady supply of additional CO2 to the atmosphere and not had any warming?
(perhaps the additional CO2 produced by humans will be augmented by the reversal of the big kahuna of carbon sinks in antartica per http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/25/antarctic-ocean-the-big-kahuna-of-glacial-period-carbon-sinks/ )
We’ll see.
“Global warming potential in 2030 in the high-growth scenario suggests that short-lived forcing of ~4.5 gigatons of black carbon from Arctic shipping may increase the global warming potential due to ships’ carbon dioxide emissions (~42,000 gigagrams) by some 17-78 percent.”
******************************************************************************
Marvelous stuff! I wonder how many ships burning just coal (are there any left?), with no clean air technology, to emit 4.5 gigatons of black carbon in the Arctic in just 2o years…
Interesting; 4.5 gigatons of black carbon? That balanced by only 42,000 gigagrams of CO2. Is it just me, or is there a deliberate attempt, by juggling different units of mass, to confuse? What are these figures based on? Twenty years ago, there were a wide range of improvements made to marine engines to reduce carbon output. Are they now saying we have to go back to sailing ships?
When you consider the tonnage shifted by a single ship, versus the tonnage moved by a comparable train or a fleet of trucks, the Co2 and black carbon per ton moved is considerably less when the goods go by sea.
“If safe, consistent routes were to open up”
A very big if. Remember that at best the northeast and northwest passages are open for a brief period in late summer. For most of the year they will always require icebreaker assistance. This will be true even if sea ice were to disappear completely in summer. Remembar that the Baltic becomes ice-free (and even bathable) every summer but it refreezes every winter. Admittedly the ice rarely becomes thicker than 3 feet, but few if any merchant ships can handle even that.
4,500,000,000 tonnes of soot? If 100 days a year were ice free, and each day 100 ships were plying the Arctic waters, that would be 450,000 tonnes of soot per ship voyage day. I think that notion is off by several orders of magnitude.
If they were to try an Arctic shipping lane, the Canadian Coast Guard says it will be a nightmare managing all the navigational aids that would be required. Think of it: thousands of buoys and channel markers, each frozen into the pack ice and moved as the ice shifts. Charts would need to be updated as the Coast Guard must reposition the buoys before the shipping season opened up.
Something doesn’t look right with this:
“… the high-growth scenario suggests that short-lived forcing of ~4.5 gigatons of black carbon from Arctic shipping …”
Four and a half THOUSAND MILLION tonnes of black carbon (soot) from shipping in the Arctic? Soot represents a small proportion of fuel burned (the great majority of flue gas emission is water and CO2) – how many thousand million tonnes of fuel do the researchers think is going to be burned in the short term by shipping in the Arctic?
Sorry, where do they get 4.5Gigatonnes from? Our current rate of adding CO2 to the atmosphere is supposedly ~8GT of C that converts into ~26GT of CO2. I’d love to see, or maybe even do a proper analysis of that, because my guess is that there is double counting and under attribution of CO2 sequestration by human activities, going on.
So how can a relatively few ship voyages (the Arctic will only be open for a few months a year even under Serrezes’ death spiralling scary scenario), cause the same amount of carbon output as half of all other activities by 7billion souls. They’re off by about three orders of magnitude there.
This is nonsense. For safe operation, ships require open water. Water with no ice is open water. Ships travelling shorter distances consume less fuel. Less fuel is less black carbon released over open water.