Proposal for IMO-controlled shipping decarbonisation fund gains traction
Some 47 governments and industry groups are lobbying the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to implement ...
© Dastin50
By Alex Lennane
Emissions reporting has upped the ante – with container shipping statistics labelled as “quite favourable”, while the impact on climate change from aviation contrails will triple by 2050.
The EU has released its Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) data on vessel CO2 emissions. Containerships emit 28% of CO2 emissions from international shipping into and out of the EU, or a quarter of total shipping emissions.
“To put that in context, container shipping carries about two-thirds of the European Union’s seaborne trade, measured by value, worth about $1.6trn, ...
Comment on this article
Jonathan Holmes
July 04, 2019 at 3:07 amFrom the study: Global radiative forcing from contrail cirrus Ulrike Burkhardt*and Bernd Kärcher March 2011
“Besides the uncertainty due to the treatment of contrail cirrus, our radiative-forcing estimates are also affected particularly by uncertainties related to the model’s representation of upper-tropospheric humidity and clouds. Clouds are influenced by small-scale processes that cannot be resolved by a large-scale climate model and which therefore need to be parametrized. The representation of clouds is a major source of uncertainty in climate simulations. The same problems also affect the representation of contrail cirrus. The uncertainty of the radiative-forcing estimates should be evaluated from independent studies based on different models and contrail-cirrus parameterizations. Reducing the uncertainty in the evaluation of contrail-cirrus radiative forcing requires more and better observational data sets24,38. In the long term, progress in this research area requires advanced representation of natural clouds and humidity in climate models and appropriate data sets for their validation”
This is hardly a conclusive study and quite laughable to think that a few tiny lines of vapor trails in billions of cubic miles of sky have any measurable impact on climate at all. From the study itself at best it’s like having 0.003% more sunlight over one particular area. Very disappointed in this kind of reporting from TLS.
Alex Lennane
July 04, 2019 at 9:18 amThe study you quote is from 2011. This latest study (2019) from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics notes that until now, the magnitude of the radiative impact of contrails could only be partly estimated, but a new model has now been developed that allows scientists to simulate the effect.
“This study suggests that contrail cirrus clouds are the single largest climate-forcing agent associated with aviation. Currently the climate is more strongly influenced by contrail cirrus clouds than by all the aircraft-emitted carbon dioxide that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the start of aviation. The findings are important because they provide the first estimate of contrail induced cloudiness on climate and a scientific basis for developing strategies to reduce the climate impact of aviation.”
However, what the article did leave out – and shouldn’t have – is that the impact of contrails can be reduced by alternative fuels, as the soot in engines makes the contrail impact worse. “Fewer soot particles in the exhaust plumes of airplanes reduces ice crystal formation and the climate impact of the resulting contrail cirrus.”