Environmental impact of exhaust emissions by Arctic shipping

Abstract

Since 2005, a dramatic decline of the Arctic sea-ice extent is observed which results in an increase of shipping activities. Even though this provides commercial and social development opportunities, the resulting environmental impacts need to be investigated and monitored. In order to understand the impact of shipping in arctic areas, the method described in this paper determines the travel time, fuel consumption and resulting exhaust emissions of ships navigating in arctic waters. The investigated case studies are considering ship particulars as well as environmental conditions with special focus on ice scenarios. Travel time, fuel consumption and exhaust gas emission were investigated for three different vessels, using different passages of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in different seasons of years 1960, 2000 and 2040. The presented results show the sensitivity of vessel performance and amount of exhaust emissions to optimize arctic traffic with respect to efficiency, safety and environmental impact.

Local Arctic air pollution: Sources and impacts

“…Use of AIS data, growth in emissions, together with the inclusion of fishing ships, and more detailed emission calculations, may explain these differences. Arctic focused estimates of ship emissions, taking into account, for example, navigation in sea-ice, would also improve emission estimates (Schröder et al 2017 ). Aliabadi et al ( 2016 ) already noted that emission factors, determined from observations behind a research vessel operating in the North-West passage (Canadian Arctic), are sensitive to sea-ice presence, showing, for example, increased NO x emission factors when the ship was ice breaking.…”

Arctic shipping: A systematic literature review of comparative studies

“…Studies within climate science evaluating future accessibility in the Arctic could also aid the modelling approaches with respect to navigation season, sea ice conditions and transit times so as to better quantify these factors. Global climate models projecting ice and weather conditions under different emissions scenarios could be used as inputs to simulations (Schröder et al, 2017). On the other hand, more diversity is needed in terms of scenarios and assumptions so as to provide fruitful insights and counter-arguments.…”

Arctic Climate Change, Economy and Society (ACCESS): Integrated perspectives

“…If the ships are forced to drive at safety speed in the presence of sea ice, this will further decrease emissions on the Arctic routes, in particular during melting and freezing seasons. Many factors influence the actual emissions, like ship and fuel type, however, the ACCESS project showed that the major one is the occurrence, thickness and distribution of sea ice (Schröder et al 2017 ).…”

“…The project used much of these findings to inform studies on the impacts of climate change on society including costs and benefits of off-shore resource extraction (Petrick et al 2017 ), tourism, marine transportation, salmon ( Salmo salar ) farming in Norway, and different scenarios (model or narrative based) of future development for example for the maritime Arctic (Brigham 2015 ) and fisheries (Eide 2017 ). The project identified and quantified environmental impacts of emissions from different sources and activities in particular regarding oil spills and response capacity (Nordam et al 2017 ; Wilkinson et al 2017 ); air pollution from ships (Law et al 2017 ; Schröder et al 2017 ); and noise. Several syntheses were produced for example on food chain interactions in the marine Arctic (Crépin et al 2017 ), seafood production (Troell et al 2017 ) and existing governance regimes and gaps (NERC 2015 ).…”