Urban population exposure to NO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;x&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt; emissions from local shipping in three Baltic Sea harbour cities – a generic approach

Ramacher, Martin Otto Paul; Karl, Matthias; Jalkanen, Jukka-Pekka; Johansson, Lasse

doi:10.5194/acp-2019-127

Cited by 12 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The overall goal was to investigate changes in impacts of shipping on the marine and terrestrial environment as well as on human health in the Baltic Sea region. The scenario results have been used to assess urban-scale impacts on air quality and human health in the Gothenburg area and several other Baltic Sea harbour cities (Ramacher et al, 2019a). In this work shipping in the urban area of Gothenburg in the future is modelled in four scenarios for 2040:…”

Section: Future Scenarios For Shipping Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of ship emissions on air quality and human health in the Gothenburg area – Part II: Scenarios for 2040

Ramacher¹,

Tang²,

Moldanová³

et al. 2020

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Abstract. Shipping is an important source of air pollutants, from the global to the local scale. Ships are emitting substantial amounts of sulphur dioxides, nitrogen dioxides and particulate matter in the vicinity of coasts, threatening the health of the coastal population, especially in harbour cities. Reductions of emissions due to shipping have been targeted by several regulations. Nevertheless, effects of these regulations come into force with temporal delays, global ship traffic is expected to grow in the future, and other land-based anthropogenic emissions might decrease. Thus, it is necessary to investigate combined impacts to identify the impact of shipping activities on air quality, population exposure and health-effects in the future. We investigated the future effect of shipping emissions on air quality and related health effects considering different scenarios of the development of shipping under current regional trends of economic growth and already decided regulations in the Gothenburg urban area in 2040. Additionally, we investigated the impact of a large-scale implementation of shore electricity in the port of Gothenburg. For this purpose, we established a one-way nested chemistry transport modelling (CTM) system from the global to the urban scale, to calculate pollutant concentrations, population weighted concentrations and health-effects related to NO2, PM2.5 and O3. The simulated concentrations of NO2 and PM2.5 in future scenarios for the year 2040 are in general very low with up to 4 ppb for NO2 and up to 3.5 µg/m3 PM2.5 in the urban areas which are not close to the port area. From 2012 the simulated overall exposure to PM2.5 decreased by approximately 30 % in simulated future scenarios, for NO2 the decrease was over 60 %. The simulated concentrations of O3 increased from year 2012 to 2040 by about 20 %. In general, the contributions of local shipping emissions in 2040 focus on the harbour area but to some extent also influence the rest of the city domain. The simulated impact of wide use of shore-site electricity for shipping in 2040 shows reductions for NO2 in the port with up to 30 %, while increasing O3 of up to 3 %. Implementation of on-shore electricity for ships at berth leads to additional local reduction potentials of up to 3 % for PM2.5 and 12 % for SO2 in the port area. All future scenarios show substantial decreases in population weighted exposure and health-effect impacts.

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Section: Future Scenarios For Shipping Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of ship emissions on air quality and human health in the Gothenburg area – Part II: Scenarios for 2040

Ramacher¹,

Tang²,

Moldanová³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…Emissions from ships are transported in the atmosphere over several hundreds of kilometres (Endresen et al, 2003). Exhaust emissions from ship traffic in the Baltic Sea has the potential to degrade air quality in the coastal areas (Jonson et al, 2015) and to significantly affect the Baltic Sea environment through acidification and eutrophication of marine waters and surrounding terrestrial ecosystems (HELCOM, 2009;Hunter et al, 2011;Raudsepp et al, 2013;Neumann et al, 2018). Acidification is a major challenge in the Baltic Sea region today where the critical load (CL) for acidification is exceeded, especially in the southern part (Tsyro et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of ship emissions on air quality in the Baltic Sea region simulated with three different chemistry transport models

et al. 2019

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Abstract. The Baltic Sea is a highly frequented shipping area with busy shipping lanes close to densely populated regions. Exhaust emissions from ship traffic into the atmosphere do not only enhance air pollution, they also affect the Baltic Sea environment through acidification and eutrophication of marine waters and surrounding terrestrial ecosystems. As part of the European BONUS project SHEBA (Sustainable Shipping and Environment of the Baltic Sea region), the transport, chemical transformation and fate of atmospheric pollutants in the Baltic Sea region were simulated with three regional chemistry transport model (CTM) systems, CMAQ, EMEP/MSC-W and SILAM, with grid resolutions between 4 and 11 km. The main goal was to quantify the effect that shipping emissions have on the regional air quality in the Baltic Sea region when the same shipping emission dataset but different CTMs are used in their typical set-ups. The performance of these models and the shipping contribution to the results of the individual models were evaluated for sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM2.5). Model results from the three CTMs for total air pollutant concentrations were compared to observations from rural and urban background stations of the AirBase monitoring network in the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea region. Observed PM2.5 in summer was underestimated strongly by CMAQ and to some extent by EMEP/MSC-W. Observed PM2.5 in winter was underestimated by SILAM. In autumn all models were in better agreement with observed PM2.5. The spatial average of the annual mean O3 in the EMEP/MSC-W simulation was ca. 20 % higher compared to the other two simulations, which is mainly the consequence of using a different set of boundary conditions for the European model domain. There are significant differences in the calculated ship contributions to the levels of air pollutants among the three models. EMEP/MSC-W, with the coarsest grid, predicted weaker ozone depletion through NO emissions in the proximity of the main shipping routes than the other two models. The average contribution of ships to PM2.5 levels in coastal land areas is in the range of 3.1 %–5.7 % for the three CTMs. Differences in ship-related PM2.5 between the models are mainly attributed to differences in the schemes for inorganic aerosol formation. Differences in the ship-related elemental carbon (EC) among the CTMs can be explained by differences in the meteorological conditions, atmospheric transport processes and the applied wet-scavenging parameterizations. Overall, results from the present study show the sensitivity of the ship contribution to combined uncertainties in boundary conditions, meteorological data and aerosol formation and deposition schemes. This is an important step towards a more reliable evaluation of policy options regarding emission regulations for ship traffic and the planned introduction of a nitrogen emission control area (NECA) in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea in 2021.

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“…Antifouling and ballast water releases are governed by separate conventions outside the MARPOL 1890 framework, but underwater noise from ships remains unregulated. The reduction of air emissions has been primarily motivated by impacts on human health (Sofiev et al, 2018;Jonson et al, 2015;Brandt et al, 2013;Mwase et al, 2020;Lin et al, 2018;Karl et al, 2019;Ramacher et al, 2019;Soares et al, 2014). Ship-emitted NOx depositions contribute to eutrophication with less than 10% of various biogeochemical variables, but this share is three to eight times larger than shipping contribution to total nitrogen input to the Baltic Sea (Raudsepp et al, 2013;Raudsepp et al, 2019).…”

Section: Shippingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human impacts and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region

Reckermann

Omstedt

Soomere

et al. 2021

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Abstract. Coastal environments, in particular heavily populated semi-enclosed marginal seas and coasts like the Baltic Sea region, are stongly affected by human activities. A multitude of human impacts, including climate change, affects the different compartments of the environment, and these effects interact with each other. As part of the Baltic Earth Assessment Reports (BEAR), we present an inventory and discussion of different human-induced factors and processes affecting the environment of the Baltic Sea region, and their interrelations. Some are naturally occurring and modified by human activities (i.e. climate change, coastal processes, hypoxia, acidification, submarine groundwater discharges, marine ecosystems, non-indigenous species, land use and land cover), some are completely human-induced (i.e. agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries, river regulations, offshore wind farms, shipping, chemical contamination, dumped warfare agents, marine litter and microplastics, tourism, coastal management), and they are all interrelated to different degrees. We present a general description and analysis of the state of knowledge on these interrelations. Our main insight is that climate change has an overarching, integrating impact on all of the other factors and can be interpreted as a background effect, which has different implications for the other factors. Impacts on the environment and the human sphere can be roughly allocated to anthropogenic drivers such as food production, energy production, transport, industry and economy. We conclude that a sound management and regulation of human activities must be implemented in order to use and keep the environments and ecosystems of the Baltic Sea region sustainably in a good shape. This must balance the human needs, which exert tremendous pressures on the systems, as humans are the overwhelming driving force for almost all changes we see. The findings from this inventory of available information and analysis of the different factors and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region can largely be transferred to other comparable marginal and coastal seas in the world.

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Urban population exposure to NO<sub>x</sub> emissions from local shipping in three Baltic Sea harbour cities – a generic approach

Cited by 12 publications

References 45 publications

The impact of ship emissions on air quality and human health in the Gothenburg area – Part II: Scenarios for 2040

The impact of ship emissions on air quality and human health in the Gothenburg area – Part II: Scenarios for 2040

Effects of ship emissions on air quality in the Baltic Sea region simulated with three different chemistry transport models

Human impacts and their interactions in the Baltic Sea region

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