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| Titel |
The influence of cruise ship emissions on air pollution in Svalbard |
| VerfasserIn |
Sabine Eckhardt, Ove Hermansen, Henrik Grythe, Markus Fiebig, Kerstin Stebel, Massimo Cassiani, Are Baecklund, Andreas Stohl |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250075411
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| Zusammenfassung |
| We have analyzed whether tourist cruise ships have an influence on measured sulfur dioxide
(SO2), ozone (O3), Aitken mode particle and equivalent black carbon (EBC) concentrations
at Ny Ålesund and Zeppelin Mountain on Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, during summer.
We separated the measurement data set into periods when ships were present and periods
when no ships were present in the Kongsfjord area, according to a long-term record of the
number of passengers visiting Ny Ålesund. We show that when ships with more than 50
passengers cruise in the Kongsfjord, measured daytime-mean concentrations of 60-nm
particles and EBC in summer show enhancements of 72 and 45% relative to values when no
ships are present. Even larger enhancements of 81 and 72% were found for stagnant
conditions. In contrast, O3 concentrations were 5% lower on average and 7% lower
under stagnant conditions, due to titration of O3 with the emitted nitric oxide (NO).
The differences between the two data subsets are largest for the highest measured
percentiles while relatively small differences were found for the median concentrations,
indicating that ship plumes are sampled relatively infrequently even when ships are
generally present but carry high concentrations. We estimate that the ships increased
the total summer mean concentrations of SO2, 60-nm particles and EBC by 15,
18 and 11%, respectively. Our findings have two important implications: Firstly,
even at such a remote Arctic observatory as Zeppelin, the measurements can be
influenced by tourist ship emissions. Careful data screening is recommended before
summer-time Zeppelin data is used for data analysis or for comparison with global
chemistry transport models. However, Zeppelin remains one of the most valuable Arctic
observatories, as most other Arctic observatories face even larger local pollution problems.
Secondly, given landing statistics of tourist ships on Svalbard, it is suspected that large
parts of the Svalbard archipelago are affected by cruise ship emissions. Thus, our
results may be taken as a warning signal of future pan-Arctic conditions, if Arctic
shipping becomes more frequent and emission regulations are not strict enough. |
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