Local and Regional Scale Impacts of Arctic Shipping Emissions Off the Coast of Northern Norway

International audienceDecreased sea ice extent due to warming has already resulted in the use of new shipping routes through the Arctic. Marine traffic is a source of air pollutants, including NOx, SO2, and aerosols, and is predicted to be an increasingly significant source of Arctic pollution in the future. Currently there are large uncertainties in both global and Arctic shipping emissions, leading to uncertainties in diagnosing current and future impacts of marine traffic on Arctic air quality and climate.This study focuses on the local scale, examining chemical/aerosol transformations occurring in individual ship plumes. Measurements of ship pollution in the Arctic taken during the EU ACCESS aircraft campaign (Arctic Climate Change, Economy and Society) in July 2012 are used to quantify the amount of pollution emitted from different ship types. This is combined with regional model (WRF-Chem) simulations to evaluate the impacts of shipping in northern Norway in summer 2012. The model is run at high resolution (2x2 km) combined with STEAMv2 (Ship Traffic Emission Assessment Model version 2) emissions (1x1 km, 15 minute resolution) produced for shipping activity during the measurement period. WRF-Chem model results are compared with 3 ship plumes sampled during ACCESS. The model shows that both the location and total amount of pollution in individual ship plumes are correctly represented. Given this, the model is used to investigate the regional influence of ship pollution off the coast of Norway on a weekly time scale during July 2012, focusing on ozone photochemistry in ship plumes, the evolution of aerosols, and investigating the fate of black carbon emitted from ships. We compare regional modeling results obtained using 15 minute resolution STEAMv2 emissions with results using weekly averaged emissions, which are more representative of emissions typically used by global models to study the impacts of shipping on air quality and climate