Local Arctic air pollution: Sources and impacts

Law, Kathy S.; Roiger, Anke; Thomas, Jennie L.; Marelle, Louis; Raut, Jean-Christophe; Dalsøren, S. B.; Fuglestvedt, Jan S.; Tuccella, Paolo; Weinzierl, Bernadett; Schläger, Hans

doi:10.1007/s13280-017-0962-2

Cited by 63 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…This suggests that Arctic air quality is already impacted by shipping emissions and that these effects are comparable to current urban impacts of shipping emissions in Europe (Viana et al, ). More recent Arctic‐wide simulations using the Winther et al () emissions investigated the impacts of future shipping and found significant increases in ozone concentrations particularly along the northern Norwegian coast, the Barents Sea, and off the northern coast of Alaska (Law et al, ) in line with prior estimates (Dalsøren et al, ; Granier et al, ). A recent study focusing on the impacts of Canadian shipping along the NWP found limited present‐day effects on aerosols and ozone but potentially large effects based on a business as usual scenario for 2030 with up to 5% increases in ozone and 5 to 20% in PM 2.5 along shipping corridors (Gong et al, ).…”

Section: Local Arctic Air Pollutant Emissionssupporting

confidence: 53%

“…In a model assessment, Tuccella et al (2017) showed that background ozone and aerosol concentrations are influenced by emissions downwind of the platforms in this region. These studies, and further discussion of these results in Law et al (2017), highlight significant shortcomings in current inventories and reported emissions such as missing mobile sources and key components like PM and volatile organic compounds, precursors to secondary organic aerosol (SOA). One challenge is the characterization of emissions through measurements.…”

Section: 1029/2018ef000952mentioning

confidence: 92%

“…For example, characterization of BC emissions from flaring is complicated by instrument limitations, such as missing the freshly emitted BC particles that are very small. Also, the highly intermittent nature of these emissions, which is not currently taken into account in inventories that provide annual means, affects emissions estimates (Law et al, ; Roiger et al, ).…”

Section: Local Arctic Air Pollutant Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local Arctic Air Pollution: A Neglected but Serious Problem

et al. 2018

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Air pollution in the Arctic caused by local emission sources is a challenge that is important but often overlooked. Local Arctic air pollution can be severe and significantly exceed air quality standards, impairing public health and affecting ecosystems. Specifically in the wintertime, pollution can accumulate under inversion layers. However, neither the contributing emission sources are well identified and quantified nor the relevant atmospheric mechanisms forming pollution are well understood. In the summer, boreal forest fires cause high levels of atmospheric pollution. Despite the often high exposure to air pollution, there are neither specific epidemiological nor toxicological health impact studies in the Arctic. Hence, effects on the local population are difficult to estimate at present. Socioeconomic development of the Arctic is already occurring and expected to be significant in the future. Arctic destination shipping is likely to increase with the development of natural resource extraction, and tourism might expand. Such development will not only lead to growth in the population living in the Arctic but will likely increase emission types and magnitudes. Present‐day inventories show a large spread in the amount and location of emissions representing a significant source of uncertainty in model predictions that often deviate significantly from observations. This is a challenge for modeling studies that aim to assess the impacts of within Arctic air pollution. Prognoses for the future are hence even more difficult, given the additional uncertainty of estimating emissions based on future Arctic economic development scenarios.

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Section: Local Arctic Air Pollutant Emissionssupporting

confidence: 53%

Section: 1029/2018ef000952mentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Local Arctic Air Pollutant Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local Arctic Air Pollution: A Neglected but Serious Problem

et al. 2018

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“…Decreasing sea ice extent is driving increased anthropogenic activities in Arctic regions, with implications for Arctic aerosol and other climate forcers (e.g., Arnold et al, ; Law et al, ; Roiger et al, ; Schmale et al, ). Future emissions are uncertain and will be determined by the interplay between a range of environmental, social, political, and economic factors (e.g., Peters et al, ).…”

Section: Regional Arctic Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processes Controlling the Composition and Abundance of Arctic Aerosol

Willis

Leaitch

Abbatt

2018

Reviews of Geophysics

145

154

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The Arctic region is a harbinger of global change and is warming at a rate higher than the global average. While Arctic warming is driven by increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gases' in combination with local feedback mechanisms, short‐lived climate forcing agents, such as tropospheric aerosol, are also important drivers of Arctic climate. Arctic aerosol‐climate impacts vary seasonally as a result of the interplay between aerosol and different cloud types, available solar radiation, sea ice, surface albedo, Arctic and lower latitude removal processes, and atmospheric transport patterns. Photochemistry and efficient wet aerosol removal have low impact in winter but become important in spring to summer, dramatically altering aerosol chemical composition, and driving the size distribution from a pronounced accumulation mode toward a dominance of smaller particles. Retreating sea ice, increasing solar insolation and warmer temperatures in summer result in enhanced emissions from Arctic marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and anthropogenic sources, with impacts on the composition of gas and particle phases. Fractional cloud cover reaches a maximum in Arctic summer, in parallel with decreasing sea ice extent and surface albedo. This seasonal variation corresponds to significant changes in the net cloud radiative effect; changes that are affected by aerosol. This review summarizes our current knowledge of processes that control Arctic aerosol properties. We highlight both natural and anthropogenic processes that will be impacted by current and future sea ice loss. Efforts are needed to better constrain aerosol removal rates, characterize aerosol precursors, and constrain the seasonality and magnitude of aerosol‐cloud‐climate impacts.

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“…Future Arctic warming, sea ice decline, and industrial development facilitates international shipping and transport via the northern sea route, which 20 consequently increase the Arctic pollutants burden (Law et al, 2017;Marelle et al, 2016). Additional observations at Arctic locations along with higher resolution modeling studies are necessary to reduce these uncertainties in future.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Source Sector and Region Contributions to Black Carbon and PM<sub>2.5</sub> in the Arctic

Sobhani¹,

Kulkarni²,

Carmichael³

2018

Preprint

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The impacts of BC and PM 2.5 emissions from different source sectors (e.g. transportation, power, 10 industry, residential, and biomass burning) and source regions (e.g. Europe, North America, China, Russia, Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East) to Arctic BC and PM 2.5 concentrations are investigated using a series of sensitivity runs with WRF-STEM modeling framework. The simulations are validated using aircraft observations over the Arctic during spring and summer 2008. Emissions from power, industrial, and biomass burning sectors are found to be the main contributors to the Arctic PM 2.5 with contributions of ~30%, ~25%, and 15 ~20% respectively. In contrast, the residential and transportation sectors are identified as the major contributors to Arctic BC with contributions of ~38% and ~30%. Anthropogenic emissions are the most dominant contributors (~88%) to the BC surface concentration over the Arctic; however, the contribution from biomass burning is significant over the summer (up to ~50%). Among all geographical regions, Europe and China have the highest contributions to the BC surface concentrations with contributions of ~46% and ~25% respectively. 20Further sensitivity runs show that among various economic sectors of all geographic regions, European and Chinese residential sector contribute up to ~25% and ~14% to the Arctic average surface BC concentration. For Arctic PM2.5, the anthropogenic emissions contribute > ~75% at the surface annually, with contributions of ~25% from Europe and ~20% from China; however, the contributions of biomass burning emissions are Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2018-65 Manuscript under review for journal Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Local Arctic air pollution: Sources and impacts

Cited by 63 publications

References 34 publications

Local Arctic Air Pollution: A Neglected but Serious Problem

Local Arctic Air Pollution: A Neglected but Serious Problem

Processes Controlling the Composition and Abundance of Arctic Aerosol

Source Sector and Region Contributions to Black Carbon and PM<sub>2.5</sub> in the Arctic

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Local Arctic air pollution: Sources and impacts

Cited by 63 publications

References 34 publications

Local Arctic Air Pollution: A Neglected but Serious Problem

Local Arctic Air Pollution: A Neglected but Serious Problem

Processes Controlling the Composition and Abundance of Arctic Aerosol

Source Sector and Region Contributions to Black Carbon and PM&lt;sub&gt;2.5&lt;/sub&gt; in the Arctic

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Source Sector and Region Contributions to Black Carbon and PM<sub>2.5</sub> in the Arctic