Seminar

Abstract

Some of the most interesting earth systems questions require parsing complex coupled human and natural elements. The quality of scientific understanding of human impact on environmental processes represents one critical input informing policy action to control human influence on or mitigate influence of environmental processes on communities. Inventories of shipping have contributed to scientific understanding of regional pollution and trans-boundary transport, partly because they can confound efforts to observe earth systems in 'pristine marine' conditions. However, ship inventories also inform policy making decisions and this role is increasingly occurring within the timescale of scientific assessment. Shipping exhibits a growth trend for uncontrolled pollutants that is highly coupled to economic activity. While not the largest sector of human activity, 20th century shipping has increased faster than many other anthropogenic sources on a global and regional scales. Ship inventories are now included in many impacts assessments of global scale environmental and climate scenarios; this is partly to evaluate whether and where their impacts are less important than other sectors of human activity, and partly to evaluate where ships may matter most. Importantly, the relatively dynamic change in shipping patterns over time scales relevant to scientific inquiry requires more than current assessments, including historic and future scenarios.

The presentation will highlight areas of special interest, such as the Arctic and ocean shipping lanes along trans boundary atmospheric transport routes, and potential co-benefits or conflicts attributable to ships, such as regional health benefits and negative climate forcing effects of ship sulfur reduction. Discussion will be invited to identify opportunities to reduce the potential for systemic bias in non-shipping assessments when emissions along well-traveled shipping lanes are ignored or poorly calibrated.