Clean Arctic Alliance Response: Shipping’s SOx Emissions and the Climate
It has been reported in the last year that the removal of sulphur from ship fuels has led to global heating and a significant increase in ocean temperature (Carbon Brief). The recent paper, published in Nature the end of May “Abrupt reduction in shipping emission as an inadvertent geoengineering termination shock produces substantial radiative warming”, argues that the introduction of an International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulation reducing the allowable levels of sulphur in ships fuels from 3.5% to 0.5% from 1 January 2020 – the so-called “sulphur cap” has created an “inadvertent geoengineering termination shock with global impact”. The findings of this paper have, however, been countered by other scientists, many of who claim that there is more to what is happening with the high ocean temperatures than can be accounted for by this latest work and the removal of the cooling effect of sulphur emissions.
