Carbonate chemistry dynamics and carbon dioxide fluxes across the atmosphere–ice–water interfaces in the Arctic Ocean: Pacific sector of the Arctic

Climatic changes in the Northern Hemisphere have led to remarkable environmental changes in the Arctic Ocean, which is surrounded by permafrost. These changes include significant shrinking of sea-ice cover in summer, increased time between sea-ice break-up and freeze-up, and Arctic surface water freshening and warming associated with melting sea-ice, thawing permafrost, and increased runoff. These changes are commonly attributed to the greenhouse effect resulting from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration and other non-CO₂ radiatively active gases (methane, nitrous oxide). The greenhouse effect should be most pronounced in the Arctic where the largest air CO₂ concentrations and winter–summer variations in the world for a clean background environment were detected. However, the air–land–shelf interaction in the Arctic has a substantial impact on the composition of the overlying atmosphere; as the permafrost thaws, a significant amount of old terrestrial carbon becomes available for biogeochemical cycling and oxidation to CO₂. The Arctic Ocean's role in determining regional CO₂ balance has been ignored, because of its small size (only  4% of the world ocean area) and because its continuous sea-ice cover is considered to impede gaseous exchange with the atmosphere so efficiently that no global climate models include CO₂ exchange over sea-ice. In this paper we show that: (1) the Arctic shelf seas (the Laptev and East-Siberian seas) may become a strong source of atmospheric CO₂ because of oxidation of bio-available eroded terrestrial carbon and river transport; (2) the Chukchi Sea shelf exhibits the strong uptake of atmospheric CO₂; (3) the sea-ice melt ponds and open brine channels form an important spring/summer air CO₂ sink that also must be included in any Arctic regional CO₂ budget. Both the direction and amount of CO₂ transfer between air and sea during open water season may be different from transfer during freezing and thawing, or during winter when CO₂ accumulates beneath Arctic sea-ice; (4) direct measurements beneath the sea ice gave two initial results. First, a drastic pCO₂ decrease from 410 μatm to 288 μatm, which was recorded in February–March beneath the fast ice near Barrow using the SAMI-CO₂ sensor, may reflect increased photosynthetic activity beneath sea-ice just after polar sunrise. Second, new measurements made in summer 2005 beneath the sea ice in the Central Basin show relatively high values of pCO₂ ranging between 425 μatm and 475 μatm, values, which are larger than the mean atmospheric value in the Arctic in summertime. The sources of those high values are supposed to be: high rates of bacterial respiration, import of the Upper Halocline Water (UHW) from the Chukchi Sea (CS) where values of pCO₂ range between 400 and 600 μatm, a contribution from the Lena river plume, or any combination of these sources.     

Economic factors affecting the registration of lower CO2 emitting aircraft in Europe

We examine the various forces influencing the development and uptake of environmentally beneficial technical changes, focusing on airline technology. Within this context, we consider not only the nature of competition within the final market in which aircraft, an intermediate product, are sold, but also that of the product market itself, the commercial airline industry. The reasons for the gradual reduction in CO₂ per seat per aircraft movement in aircraft design are examined in terms of the real costs of aviation fuel, changes in the nature of the supply industry, the movement towards carbon cap-trade policies, and endogenous technical progress in the technology of the industry. The latter being taken as an empirical proxy for the role market forms play in influencing the fuel efficiency of the types of aircraft used. The results support the existence of these latter forces on the demand for aircraft types, allowing for other influences that affect aircraft technology.     

Forecasting the impacts of climate change on inland waterways

Inland waterways are vulnerable to climate change as river navigation depends on water levels. Droughts can severely disrupt inland navigation services by reducing water levels either to completely non-navigable ones or to levels that oblige operators to reduce vessel load. We analyse the impacts of droughts induced by climate change using projections of river discharge data provided by eleven different climate model runs. We consider location specific characteristics by focusing the analysis on four specific locations of the Rhine and the Danube where a substantial part of the total freight activity in the European Union (EU) takes place. For the majority of the cases and scenarios considered, a decrease of the number of low water level days is projected, leading to fewer drought related disruptions in the operation of the inland waterway transport system. Although the uncertainties from the climate projections should not be neglected, the navigation sector could benefit from global warming which means that European inland waterways might be one of the few sectors where climate change can have negligible, or even positive, impact. The average economic benefit, for the cases considered, from the decrease of low water levels by the end of the century is projected to be almost €8million annually.     

Grand challenges for high-speed rail environmental assessment in the United States

The comprehensiveness of environmental assessments of future long-distance travel that include high-speed rail (HSR) are constrained by several methodological, institutional, and knowledge gaps that must and can be addressed. These gaps preclude a robust understanding of the changes in environmental, human health, resource, and climate change impacts that result from the implementation of HSR in the United States. The gaps are also inimical to an understanding of how HSR can be positioned for 21st century sustainability goals. Through a synthesis of environmental studies, the gaps are grouped into five overarching grand challenges. They include a spatial incompatibility between HSR and other long-distance modes that is often ignored, an environmental review process that obviates modal alternatives, siloed interest in particular environmental impacts, a dearth of data on future vehicle and energy sources, and a poor understanding of secondary impacts, particularly in land use. Recommendations are developed for institutional investment in multimodal research, knowledge and method building around several topics. Ultimately, the environmental assessment of HSR should be integrated in assessments that seek to understand the complementary and competitive configurations of transportation services, as well as future accessibility.     

Climate change modeling and the weather-related road accidents in Canada

The objective of this research is to study the impact of climate change on the hazardous weather-related road accidents in the New Brunswick, Canada. We develop an Exposure to Weather-Accident Severity (EWAS) index multiplying accident and weather severity. The Negative Binomial Regression and Poisson regression models are applied to estimate the spatial–temporal relationship between the EWAS index and weather-related explanatory variables of road accidents. The regression results show that the surface-weather condition, weather, driver’s gender, weather-driver’s age, weather-driver’s experience, and weather-vehicle’s age have strong positive correlation with the EWAS index, while the surface-road alignment and surface-road characteristics have negative relationship with the EWAS index. The climate change model also indicates that the number of accidents declines during snowy and freezing days—most people stay at home and those who travel extra cautious—accidents do occur. The study suggests that the Road Safety Strategy 2015 of the Transport Canada should take a holistic approach to help minimize the incidences of severe road accident during the normal as well as hazardous weather conditions.     

A ‘sustainability window’ of urban form

With global environmental change and the rise of global megacities, environmental and social externalities of urban systems, and especially of urban form, become increasingly prevalent. The question of optimal urban form has been debated and investigated by different disciplines in numerous contexts, including those of transport costs, land consumption and congestion. Here we elucidate theoretically how urban form and the urban transport system systematically modifies sustainability concerns, such as greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollution and congestion. We illustrate our analytical considerations with empirical analysis. Denser urban form would almost unambiguously mitigate climate change, but it would also lead to undesired effects, such as a higher proportion of urban dwellers affected by air pollution. Our study presents a ‘sustainability window’ by highlighting trade-offs between these sustainability concerns as a function of urban form. Only a combination of transportation policies, infrastructure investments and progressive public finance enables the development of cities that perform well in several sustainability dimensions. We estimate that a residential population density between 50 and 150 persons/ha and a modal share of environmental modes above at least 50% corresponds to the sustainability window of urban form. The parameters of the sustainability window of urban form is subject to policy changes and technological progress.     

Modal-split effects of climate change: The effect of low water levels on the competitive position of inland waterway transport in the river Rhine area

Future climate change is expected to affect inland waterway transport in most main natural waterways in Europe. For the river Rhine it is expected that, in summer, more and longer periods with low water levels will occur. In periods of low water levels inland waterway vessels have to reduce their load factors and, as a result, transport prices per tonne will increase. One possible consequence of these higher transport prices is a deterioration of the competitive position of inland waterway transport compared with rail and road transport, and thus a change in modal split. We study this issue using a GIS-based software model called NODUS which provides a tool for the detailed analysis of freight transportation over extensive multimodal networks. We assess the effect of low water levels on the costs of transport operations for inland waterway transport in North West Europe under several climate scenarios. It turns out, that the effect on the modal split is limited. Under the most extreme climate scenario, inland waterway transport would lose about 5.4% of the quantity that is currently being transported annually in the part of the European inland waterway transport market considered. The very dry year of 2003 can be seen as an analogue for this scenario.     

The future tourism mobility of the world population: Emission growth versus climate policy

Much of global passenger transport is linked to tourism. The sector is therefore of interest in studying global mobility trends and transport-related emissions. In 2005, tourism was responsible for around 5% of all CO₂ emissions, of which 75% were caused by passenger transport. Given the rapid growth in tourism, with 1.6 billion international tourist arrivals predicted by 2020 (up from 903 million in 2007), it is clear that the sector will contribute to rapidly growing emission levels, and increasingly interfere with global climate policy. This is especially true under climate stabilisation and “avoiding dangerous climate change” objectives, implying global emission reductions in the order of −50% to −80% by 2050, compared to 2000. Based on three backcasting scenarios, and using techniques integrating quantitative and qualitative elements, this paper discusses the options for emission reductions in the tourism sector and the consequences of mitigation for global tourism-related mobility by 2050. It ends with a discussion of the policy implications of the results.     

Bacterial production and microbial food web structure in a large arctic river and the coastal Arctic Ocean

Globally significant quantities of organic carbon are stored in northern permafrost soils, but little is known about how this carbon is processed by microbial communities once it enters rivers and is transported to the coastal Arctic Ocean. As part of the Arctic River-Delta Experiment (ARDEX), we measured environmental and microbiological variables along a 300 km transect in the Mackenzie River and coastal Beaufort Sea, in July–August 2004. Surface bacterial concentrations averaged 6.7 × 10⁵ cells mL^− 1 with no significant differences between sampling zones. Picocyanobacteria were abundant in the river, and mostly observed as cell colonies. Their concentrations in the surface waters decreased across the salinity gradient, dropping from 51,000 (river) to 30 (sea) cells mL^− 1. There were accompanying shifts in protist community structure, from diatoms, cryptophytes, heterotrophic protists and chrysophytes in the river, to dinoflagellates, prymnesiophytes, chrysophytes, prasinophytes, diatoms and heterotrophic protists in the Beaufort Sea.Size-fractionated bacterial production, as measured by ³H–leucine uptake, varied from 76 to 416 ng C L^− 1 h^− 1. The contribution of particle-attached bacteria (> 3 µm fraction) to total bacterial production decreased from > 90% at the Mackenzie River stations to < 20% at an offshore marine site, and the relative importance of this particle-based fraction was inversely correlated with salinity and positively correlated with particulate organic carbon concentrations. Glucose enrichment experiments indicated that bacterial metabolism was carbon limited in the Mackenzie River but not in the coastal ocean. Prior exposure of water samples to full sunlight increased the biolability of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the Mackenzie River but decreased it in the Beaufort Sea.Estimated depth-integrated bacterial respiration rates in the Mackenzie River were higher than depth-integrated primary production rates, while at the marine stations bacterial respiration rates were near or below the integrated primary production rates. Consistent with these results, P_CO2 measurements showed surface water supersaturation in the river (mean of 146% of air equilibrium values) and subsaturation or near-saturation in the coastal sea. These results show a well-developed microbial food web in the Mackenzie River system that will likely convert tundra carbon to atmospheric CO₂ at increasing rates as the arctic climate continues to warm.     

‘Each flight is different’: Carbon emissions of selected flights in three geographical markets

Air travel is considered the biggest individual climate sin. Avoiding flying, however, seems impossible. In this paper we argue that the flight a passenger chooses can be significant. For this purpose we compared the carbon emissions of selected flights in three geographical markets. We found tremendous differences in the environmental performance of individual flights. Furthermore, we also found that flying with the most modern aircraft or flying non-stop represents, in many cases, the least polluting option. Nevertheless, we were able to show that there are exceptions to this rule. Based on our results, we provide recommendations to the industry and for further research.