Quantifying Emerging Local Anthropogenic Emissions in the Arctic Region: The ACCESS Aircraft Campaign Experiment

Abstract

International audienceArctic sea ice has decreased dramatically in the past few decades and the Arctic is increasingly open to transit shipping and natural resource extraction. However, large knowledge gaps exist regarding composition and impacts of emissions associated with these activities. Arctic hydrocarbon extraction is currently under development due to the large oil/gas reserves in the region. Transit shipping through the Arctic as an alternative to the traditional shipping routes is currently underway. These activities are expected to increase emissions of air pollutants and climate forcers (e.g. aerosols, ozone) in the Arctic troposphere significantly in the future. We present the first measurements of these activities off the coast of Norway taken in summer 2012 as part of the European Arctic Climate Change, Economy, and Society (ACCESS) project. The objectives include quantifying the impact anthropogenic activities will have on regional air pollution and understanding the connections to Arctic climate. Trace gas and aerosol concentrations in pollution plumes were measured, including emissions from different ship types and several offshore extraction facilities. Emissions originating from industrial activities (smelting) on the Kola Peninsula were also sampled. In addition, pollution plumes originating from Siberian biomass burning were probed in order to put the emerging local pollution within a broader context. In near future these measurements will be combined with model simulations to quantify the influence of local anthropogenic activities on Arctic composition. Here we present the scientific objectives of the ACCESS aircraft experiment, the meteorological conditions during the campaign, and highlight first scientific results from the experiment

Validation of reactive gases and aerosols in the MACC global analysis and forecast system

“…Examples are ACCESS (Roiger et al, 2014) and POLARCAT/POLMIP (Emmons et al, 2015). Note that MACC is providing support to flight planning during field campaigns like ACCESS.…”

Air pollution impacts due to petroleum extraction in the Norwegian Sea during the ACCESS aircraft campaign

“…An overview of the ACCESS aircraft campaign is given in Roiger et al (2015). For completeness, we briefly describe the details of the ACCESS campaign, conducted in July 2012 using the DLR Falcon-20 aircraft based in northern Norway.…”

“…The main aim was to collect data on emerging local pollution sources in the Arctic in order to evaluate their impacts on atmospheric composition and on regional air quality and climate. During the campaign, emissions from shipping and oil/gas extraction, as well as pollution plumes transported from metal smelting activities in north-west Russia and from Siberian fires were studied (see Roiger et al, 2015 for further discussion). An analysis of ACCESS flights focusing on ship emissions and their impacts can be found in Marelle et al (2016).…”

“…During this campaign, measurements were taken in the vicinity of extraction installations in the Norwegian Sea (Roiger et al, 2015). We note that these flights represent, to our knowledge, some of the first reported data on pollutant emissions from oil and gas extraction under summertime Arctic conditions.…”

On measurements of aerosol-gas composition of the atmosphere during two expeditions in 2013 along the Northern Sea Route

“…Recent studies (Roiger et al, 2015;Law et al, 2014;Stohl et al, 2013, and references therein) have shown that a number of other factors, overlooked or underestimated in previous climate modeling, should be taken into consideration. Primarily, there had been an accelerated development of northern territories, associated with extraction and processing of mineral resources, combustion of petroleum gas in the regions of oil and gas production, and intensification of sea and air transportation.…”