An Open Letter to the IMO Supporting Maritime Transport that Cools the Atmosphere While Preserving Air Quality Benefits, Oxford Open Ron Baiman, Rebecca Bishop, Clive Elsworth, Alan Gadian, Bruce Melton, Oswald Petersen, Ye Tao
Oxford Open Climate Change, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2024, kgae008
Published: 04 July 2024
We are in a global warming emergency that is being exacerbated by a rapid decline in anthropogenically-caused atmospheric aerosol loading [1].
Recently implemented International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations on bunker-fuel sulfur oxide (SOx) [2–4] are an important contributor to these reduced aerosol loadings and high sea surface temperatures [1, 5, 6].
Numerous studies have suggested that these reduced aerosol loadings have and will significantly increase global warming [1, 7–20]. Higher sea surface temperatures have been implicated in the intensification of extreme flooding worldwide and in the dying of an estimated 19% of coral reefs globally since 2009 [21–23].
This suggests the need to reconsider and refine the regulations.
Following [18], it may be possible to offset the global warming harm of these regulations by temporarily relaxing them for “high seas” sulfur emissions (i.e. far from ports and population centers) while largely preserving air quality benefits in ports and coastal areas like current IMO “Emission Control Areas” (For “Emissions Control Areas” delineations see [24].). It may also be possible to replace the cooling effect of fossil fuel-based shipping emissions while preserving or enhancing air quality by releasing benign tropospheric aerosol precursors from ships [25].
We therefore ask that the International Maritime Organization and other international and national health and environmental organizations urgently support and sponsor research, pilot testing and emergency regulations, that would:
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