Tianle Yuan, Hua Song, Lazaros Oreopoulos
Robert Wood, Huisheng Bian, Katherine Breen, Mian Chin, Hongbin Yu, Donifan Barahona, Kerry Meyer, Steven Platnick
2024 · Communications Earth & Environment
Abstract Human activities affect the Earth’s climate through modifying the composition of the atmosphere, which then creates radiative forcing that drives climate change. The warming effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases has been partially balanced by the cooling effect of anthropogenic aerosols. In 2020, fuel regulations abruptly reduced the emission of sulfur dioxide from international shipping by about 80% and created an inadvertent geoengineering termination shock with global impact. Here we estimate the regulation leads to a radiative forcing of $$+0.2\pm 0.11$$ + 0.2 ± 0.11 Wm −2 averaged over the global ocean. The amount of radiative forcing could lead to a doubling (or more) of the warming rate in the 2020 s compared with the rate since 1980 with strong spatiotemporal heterogeneity. The warming effect is consistent with the recent observed strong warming in 2023 and expected to make the 2020 s anomalously warm. The forcing is equivalent in magnitude to 80% of the measured increase in planetary heat uptake since 2020. The radiative forcing also has strong hemispheric contrast, which has important implications for precipitation pattern changes. Our result suggests marine cloud brightening may be a viable geoengineering method in temporarily cooling the climate that has its unique challenges due to inherent spatiotemporal heterogeneity.
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What about the positive externalities of sulfur dioxide emissions reducing temperatures? We need more container ships polluting or the post 2020 global warming rate could double! https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3
> No matter what car you buy today it is emitting less pollution than ten, twenty, and especially thirty to fifty years ago. Sure, but a single bus would emit way less than the 60-150 cars (yes, large buses here have a total capacity of about 150 people [1]) it replaces. And if you have a bikable city like about every city in the Netherlands is, there's zero emissions. > Meanwhile we still burn bunker oil (the leftovers from petroleum distillation) in shipping. It’s as if we swore off doing anything better for the planet if it inconveniences a large company. We do, but even there there is progress! In fact, the regulations on sulphur content going into effect showed that…
this actually had climate impacts on the scale of an ultra-large geoengineering project [2]. On top of that, bunker fuel is banned in many countries' 12-mile-zone or at the very least near ports, ships have to burn diesel there. [1] https://infoportal.mobil.nrw/technik/bussemitkonventionellem... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3
Interestingly, that used to be true, but in the past few years some regulations have gone into effect regarding sulfur emissions in cargo ships. I think that was probably a good thing in the long run, but there's some evidence that the sulfur particulate matter was "hiding" some of the warming we "should" have been seeing based on our CO2 emissions, because global warming has spiked a bit as sulfur has decreased. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3
>I read somewhere that running on bunker fuel was the equivalent pollution of 50m cars. For SO2 and NO2 pollution, not CO2. They are the most efficient way of transportation in terms of CO2 emissions. Ironically reducing their sulfur dioxide emissions is likely what caused the uptick in global temperatures the last two years. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3
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