- Email: [email protected]
Aviation, melting sea-ice and polar bears
Environment International 133 (2019) 105279
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Environment International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envint
Aviation, melting sea-ice and polar bears
T
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Handling Editor: Adrian Covaci
On 11 May 2019, the Mauna Loa, Hawaii, Earth System Research Laboratory reported the highest CO2 concentration in human meteorological history. Continuing CO2 rise will devastate ecosystems, and ice dependent species like polar bears ultimately will disappear. Commercial aviation is presently a relatively small CO2 contributor, but this CO2 intensive mode of transportation is projected to increase greatly. Scientists and conservationists are often among the most frequent of flyers, despite their recognition that emissions must be reduced. Here we illustrate the carbon footprint of air travel in terms of its impact on the sea ice habitat necessary for polar bear persistence, and suggest our colleagues reduce their air travel where-ever possible. Each metric ton of CO2 emitted melts ~3 m2 of arctic summer sea ice, and current air travel melts over 5000 m2 each year. Each scientist making the short flight from Copenhagen to Oslo to join an IUCN polar bear meeting will melt ~1 m2 of Arctic summer sea-ice. Annually hundreds of scientists and conservationists make frequent flights of much greater distances for AMAP, CAFF, IUCN, and other conservation related meetings. Much of this travel could be avoided with better planning and employing internet linkages for remote participation. When air travel, such as for necessary fieldwork, cannot be easily substituted by Web linkage, we all should search for routes and carriers allowing the lowest CO2 emissions. We encourage all of our colleagues to join ‘No Fly Climate Sci’ to show their commitment to CO2 reduction and learn more about doing so. As scientists, if we are serious about preserving polar bears and their Arctic sea ice habitat, we need to walk the talk and show an example for the rest of society by significantly reducing our air travel.
Keywords: Climate Carbon dioxide Mercury Pollution Extinction Legislation
1. Greenhouse gases and aviation Several publications in Environment International have described how pollution and reduced sea-ice affect the health of polar bears (Dietz et al., 2018; Daugaard-Petersen et al., 2018; Sonne, 2010). Given the recent development in climate change and greenhouse gases, the efforts in polar bear conservation is more important than ever. Societies have shown no effective reduction in CO2 emissions and according to the Hawaii Mauna Loa Earth System Research Laboratory, the highest atmospheric CO2 concentrations ever measured was 11 May 2019 (Earth System Research Laboratory, 2019). While many European industries reduce their CO2 emissions, increased volumes are derived from airlines. The global number of flight passengers is now more than 4.6 billion per year, and that will probably double within the next 20 years (Statista, 2019). Thus, airline traffic is now called ́ the new coaĺ by The European Federation for Transport and Environment despite they currently only account for around 2% of the global carbon footprint (ATAG, 2019). 2. Melting sea-ice and threatening of polar bears If each of the 4.3 billion flight passenger on average fly 2000 km, their yearly carbon footprint is 0.424 metric ton adding up to 1.82 billion tons CO2 according to Myclimate (2019). Given that one metric ton of CO2 emission melts 3 square meters of Arctic summer sea-ice (Notz and Stroeve, 2016), the world’s flight passengers together melt 5470 km2 sea-ice each year, which correspond to a landmass equivalent to Trinidad and Tobago or as much as 1.35 million soccer fields.
Fig. 1 show the relationship between flight length, CO2 emission and melted Arctic sea-ice. The yearly sea-ice loss caused by aviation is equal to the home range of four polar bears in for example Hudson Bay; an area suffering from severe sea-ice reduction which affect polar bears’ behaviour and survival (Castro de la Guardia et al., 2013; Durner et al., 2017; McCall et al., 2015). If the CO2 emission from aviation and other sources continue over the coming two decades, all Arctic summer seaice will be gone by year 2040 (Stroeve and Notz, 2018). These changes are predicted to cause a severe impact on polar bears through loss of habitat, food and breeding areas affecting their reproductive capacity due to loss of food and critical body weight from late fall sea-ice formation (Molnár et al., 2011). For polar bears, a population collapse and maybe extinction by year 2100 may happen due to loss of sea-ice alone (Amstrup et al., 2010). 3. Researcher’s mitigations Many researchers’ think about their carbon dioxide emissions due to travelling activities including fieldwork in the Arctic (Kjellman, 2019). As part of this we urge researchers to support and join ‘No Fly Climate Scí (Langin, 2019) or at least make sure to choose the airline that has the lowest CO2 emission when travelling using the web page found at Simpleflying (2019). For example, flying from Copenhagen to Oslo to join a polar bear meeting will melt around 1 m2 per researcher of Arctic summer sea-ice while it for the whole group will be several hundred square meters. Therefore, webinars and videoconferences should replace meetings and conferences when possible to limit flight hours, and national and international research councils and foundations should
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105279 Received 13 August 2019; Received in revised form 18 October 2019; Accepted 18 October 2019 0160-4120/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
Environment International 133 (2019) 105279
Fig. 1. The relationship between flight length (km), CO2 emission (broken line, tons) and melted Arctic sea-ice (solid line, m2). Calculations based on Myclimate (2019) and Notz and Stroeve (2016).
adapt their activities to reduce CO2 emissions from flights as well. The scientific societies should not only come up with the solutions, but must also lead the way as a good example to follow for others. Otherwise, it may soon be too late to save our globe from further climate change and avoid the loss of vulnerable important key species in the Arctic such as polar bears. Arctic researcher should think twice before conducting field work and go to for example AMAP, CAFF and IUCN PBSG meetings. Therefore, if we Arctic scientists are serious about saving the environment we need to consider these mitigations and reduce our air traveling significantly. So dear pears: act now please!
Int. 118, 69–178. Durner, G.M., Douglas, D.C., Albeke, S.E., Whiteman, J.P., Amstrup, S.C., Richardson, E., Wilson, R.R., Ben-David, M., 2017. Increased Arctic sea ice drift alters adult female polar bear movements and energetics. Global Change Biol. 23, 3460–3473. Earth System Research Laboratory, 2019. Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. HTML: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/. Kjellman, S.E., 2019. As a climate researcher, should I change my air-travel habits? HTML: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01652-2. Langin, K., 2019. Climate scientists say no to flying. Science 364, 621. McCall, A.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, A.J., 2015. Home range distribution of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. Polar Biol. 38, 343–355. Molnár, P.K., Derocher, A.E., Klanjscek, T., Lewis, M.A., 2011. Predicting climate change impacts on polar bear litter size. Nat. Commun. 2, 186. Myclimate, 2019. Shape our future. https://www.myclimate.org/. Notz, D., Stroeve, J., 2016. Observed Arctic sea-ice loss directly follows anthropogenic CO2 emission. Science 354, 747–750. Sonne, C., 2010. Health effects from long-range transported contaminants in Arctic top predators: an integrated review based on studies of polar bears and relevant model species. Environ. Int. 36, 461–491. Statista, 2019. Number of scheduled passengers boarded by the global airline industry from 2004 to 2019 (in millions). HTML: https://www.statista.com/statistics/ 564717/airline-industry-passenger-traffic-globally/. Stroeve, J., Notz, D., 2018. Changing state of Arctic sea ice across all seasons. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 103001. Simpleflying, 2019. These are the top airlines for CO2 pollution. HTML: https:// simpleflying.com/these-are-the-top-airlines-for-co2-pollution/.
Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest. Appendix A. Supplementary material Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105279. References
Christian Sonnea, , Aage K.O. Alstrupb, Rune Dietza, Yong Sik Okc, Tomasz Maciej Ciesielskid, Bjørn Munro Jenssena,b a Aarhus University, Department of Bioscience, Arctic Research Centre (ARC), Frederiksborgvej 399, PO Box 358, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark b Aarhus University Hospital, Department of Nuclear Medicine and PET Center, Palle Juul-Jensens Boulevard 99, DK-8200 Aarhus N, Denmark c Korea Biochar Research Center, Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea d Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 5, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Sonne). ⁎
Amstrup, S.C., Deweaver, E.T., Douglas, D.C., Marcot, B.G., Durner, G.M., Bitz, C.M., Bailey, D.A., 2010. Greenhouse gas mitigation can reduce sea-ice loss and increase polar bear persistence. Nature 468, 955–958. ATAG, 2019. Facts & Figures. HTML: https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html. Castro de la Guardia, L., Derocher, A.E., Myers, P.G., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D., Lunn, N.J., 2013. Future sea ice conditions in Western Hudson Bay and consequences for polar bears in the 21st century. Global Change Biol. 19, 2675–2687. Daugaard-Petersen, T., Langebæk, R., Rigét, F.F., Dyck, M., Letcher, R.J., Hyldstrup, L., Dietz, R., Sonne, C., 2018. Persistent organic pollutants and penile bone mineral density in East Greenland and Canadian polar bears (Ursus maritimus) during 1996–2015. Environ. Int. 114, 212–218. Dietz, R., Desforges, J.P., Gustavson, K., Rigét, F.F., Born, E.W., Letcher, R.J., Sonne, C., 2018. Immunologic, reproductive, and carcinogenic risk assessment from POP exposure in East Greenland polar bears (Ursus maritimus) during 1983–2013. Environ.
⁎ Corresponding author at: Aarhus University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Bioscience, Frederiksborgvej 399, PO Box 358, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark.
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Environment International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envint
Aviation, melting sea-ice and polar bears
T
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Handling Editor: Adrian Covaci
On 11 May 2019, the Mauna Loa, Hawaii, Earth System Research Laboratory reported the highest CO2 concentration in human meteorological history. Continuing CO2 rise will devastate ecosystems, and ice dependent species like polar bears ultimately will disappear. Commercial aviation is presently a relatively small CO2 contributor, but this CO2 intensive mode of transportation is projected to increase greatly. Scientists and conservationists are often among the most frequent of flyers, despite their recognition that emissions must be reduced. Here we illustrate the carbon footprint of air travel in terms of its impact on the sea ice habitat necessary for polar bear persistence, and suggest our colleagues reduce their air travel where-ever possible. Each metric ton of CO2 emitted melts ~3 m2 of arctic summer sea ice, and current air travel melts over 5000 m2 each year. Each scientist making the short flight from Copenhagen to Oslo to join an IUCN polar bear meeting will melt ~1 m2 of Arctic summer sea-ice. Annually hundreds of scientists and conservationists make frequent flights of much greater distances for AMAP, CAFF, IUCN, and other conservation related meetings. Much of this travel could be avoided with better planning and employing internet linkages for remote participation. When air travel, such as for necessary fieldwork, cannot be easily substituted by Web linkage, we all should search for routes and carriers allowing the lowest CO2 emissions. We encourage all of our colleagues to join ‘No Fly Climate Sci’ to show their commitment to CO2 reduction and learn more about doing so. As scientists, if we are serious about preserving polar bears and their Arctic sea ice habitat, we need to walk the talk and show an example for the rest of society by significantly reducing our air travel.
Keywords: Climate Carbon dioxide Mercury Pollution Extinction Legislation
1. Greenhouse gases and aviation Several publications in Environment International have described how pollution and reduced sea-ice affect the health of polar bears (Dietz et al., 2018; Daugaard-Petersen et al., 2018; Sonne, 2010). Given the recent development in climate change and greenhouse gases, the efforts in polar bear conservation is more important than ever. Societies have shown no effective reduction in CO2 emissions and according to the Hawaii Mauna Loa Earth System Research Laboratory, the highest atmospheric CO2 concentrations ever measured was 11 May 2019 (Earth System Research Laboratory, 2019). While many European industries reduce their CO2 emissions, increased volumes are derived from airlines. The global number of flight passengers is now more than 4.6 billion per year, and that will probably double within the next 20 years (Statista, 2019). Thus, airline traffic is now called ́ the new coaĺ by The European Federation for Transport and Environment despite they currently only account for around 2% of the global carbon footprint (ATAG, 2019). 2. Melting sea-ice and threatening of polar bears If each of the 4.3 billion flight passenger on average fly 2000 km, their yearly carbon footprint is 0.424 metric ton adding up to 1.82 billion tons CO2 according to Myclimate (2019). Given that one metric ton of CO2 emission melts 3 square meters of Arctic summer sea-ice (Notz and Stroeve, 2016), the world’s flight passengers together melt 5470 km2 sea-ice each year, which correspond to a landmass equivalent to Trinidad and Tobago or as much as 1.35 million soccer fields.
Fig. 1 show the relationship between flight length, CO2 emission and melted Arctic sea-ice. The yearly sea-ice loss caused by aviation is equal to the home range of four polar bears in for example Hudson Bay; an area suffering from severe sea-ice reduction which affect polar bears’ behaviour and survival (Castro de la Guardia et al., 2013; Durner et al., 2017; McCall et al., 2015). If the CO2 emission from aviation and other sources continue over the coming two decades, all Arctic summer seaice will be gone by year 2040 (Stroeve and Notz, 2018). These changes are predicted to cause a severe impact on polar bears through loss of habitat, food and breeding areas affecting their reproductive capacity due to loss of food and critical body weight from late fall sea-ice formation (Molnár et al., 2011). For polar bears, a population collapse and maybe extinction by year 2100 may happen due to loss of sea-ice alone (Amstrup et al., 2010). 3. Researcher’s mitigations Many researchers’ think about their carbon dioxide emissions due to travelling activities including fieldwork in the Arctic (Kjellman, 2019). As part of this we urge researchers to support and join ‘No Fly Climate Scí (Langin, 2019) or at least make sure to choose the airline that has the lowest CO2 emission when travelling using the web page found at Simpleflying (2019). For example, flying from Copenhagen to Oslo to join a polar bear meeting will melt around 1 m2 per researcher of Arctic summer sea-ice while it for the whole group will be several hundred square meters. Therefore, webinars and videoconferences should replace meetings and conferences when possible to limit flight hours, and national and international research councils and foundations should
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105279 Received 13 August 2019; Received in revised form 18 October 2019; Accepted 18 October 2019 0160-4120/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
Environment International 133 (2019) 105279
Fig. 1. The relationship between flight length (km), CO2 emission (broken line, tons) and melted Arctic sea-ice (solid line, m2). Calculations based on Myclimate (2019) and Notz and Stroeve (2016).
adapt their activities to reduce CO2 emissions from flights as well. The scientific societies should not only come up with the solutions, but must also lead the way as a good example to follow for others. Otherwise, it may soon be too late to save our globe from further climate change and avoid the loss of vulnerable important key species in the Arctic such as polar bears. Arctic researcher should think twice before conducting field work and go to for example AMAP, CAFF and IUCN PBSG meetings. Therefore, if we Arctic scientists are serious about saving the environment we need to consider these mitigations and reduce our air traveling significantly. So dear pears: act now please!
Int. 118, 69–178. Durner, G.M., Douglas, D.C., Albeke, S.E., Whiteman, J.P., Amstrup, S.C., Richardson, E., Wilson, R.R., Ben-David, M., 2017. Increased Arctic sea ice drift alters adult female polar bear movements and energetics. Global Change Biol. 23, 3460–3473. Earth System Research Laboratory, 2019. Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. HTML: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/. Kjellman, S.E., 2019. As a climate researcher, should I change my air-travel habits? HTML: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01652-2. Langin, K., 2019. Climate scientists say no to flying. Science 364, 621. McCall, A.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, A.J., 2015. Home range distribution of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. Polar Biol. 38, 343–355. Molnár, P.K., Derocher, A.E., Klanjscek, T., Lewis, M.A., 2011. Predicting climate change impacts on polar bear litter size. Nat. Commun. 2, 186. Myclimate, 2019. Shape our future. https://www.myclimate.org/. Notz, D., Stroeve, J., 2016. Observed Arctic sea-ice loss directly follows anthropogenic CO2 emission. Science 354, 747–750. Sonne, C., 2010. Health effects from long-range transported contaminants in Arctic top predators: an integrated review based on studies of polar bears and relevant model species. Environ. Int. 36, 461–491. Statista, 2019. Number of scheduled passengers boarded by the global airline industry from 2004 to 2019 (in millions). HTML: https://www.statista.com/statistics/ 564717/airline-industry-passenger-traffic-globally/. Stroeve, J., Notz, D., 2018. Changing state of Arctic sea ice across all seasons. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 103001. Simpleflying, 2019. These are the top airlines for CO2 pollution. HTML: https:// simpleflying.com/these-are-the-top-airlines-for-co2-pollution/.
Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest. Appendix A. Supplementary material Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105279. References
Christian Sonnea, , Aage K.O. Alstrupb, Rune Dietza, Yong Sik Okc, Tomasz Maciej Ciesielskid, Bjørn Munro Jenssena,b a Aarhus University, Department of Bioscience, Arctic Research Centre (ARC), Frederiksborgvej 399, PO Box 358, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark b Aarhus University Hospital, Department of Nuclear Medicine and PET Center, Palle Juul-Jensens Boulevard 99, DK-8200 Aarhus N, Denmark c Korea Biochar Research Center, Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea d Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 5, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Sonne). ⁎
Amstrup, S.C., Deweaver, E.T., Douglas, D.C., Marcot, B.G., Durner, G.M., Bitz, C.M., Bailey, D.A., 2010. Greenhouse gas mitigation can reduce sea-ice loss and increase polar bear persistence. Nature 468, 955–958. ATAG, 2019. Facts & Figures. HTML: https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html. Castro de la Guardia, L., Derocher, A.E., Myers, P.G., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D., Lunn, N.J., 2013. Future sea ice conditions in Western Hudson Bay and consequences for polar bears in the 21st century. Global Change Biol. 19, 2675–2687. Daugaard-Petersen, T., Langebæk, R., Rigét, F.F., Dyck, M., Letcher, R.J., Hyldstrup, L., Dietz, R., Sonne, C., 2018. Persistent organic pollutants and penile bone mineral density in East Greenland and Canadian polar bears (Ursus maritimus) during 1996–2015. Environ. Int. 114, 212–218. Dietz, R., Desforges, J.P., Gustavson, K., Rigét, F.F., Born, E.W., Letcher, R.J., Sonne, C., 2018. Immunologic, reproductive, and carcinogenic risk assessment from POP exposure in East Greenland polar bears (Ursus maritimus) during 1983–2013. Environ.
⁎ Corresponding author at: Aarhus University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Bioscience, Frederiksborgvej 399, PO Box 358, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark.
2