Dirty fuel-guzzlers befoul the Arctic skies

The aging Boeing-737 jets used by Canada’s northern airlines use more fuel, produce more climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions and soot than similar more recently built aircraft. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

COPENHAGEN — The aging, gas-guzzling jets and other planes flying around Canada’s Arctic, including Nunavut, spew out more climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions and soot than similar, more recently built aircraft, say scientists at the United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen.

The Boeing 737-200s have been retired from use everywhere else in North America, according to a panel of aviation experts at a Dec. 8 side event organized by the United States.

And these jets, still in service in Canada’s Arctic, will soon become outdated fossils.

That’s because the U.S. aviation industry plans to manufacture more aerodynamic and fuel-efficient aircraft to reduce climate impacts from aviation.

At the same time, countries all over the world, including Canada, are likely to sign on to a global deal to cut aircraft emissions, which may spell the end of B-737-200s.

Over the past 30 years, the fuel efficiency of new jets has been improved by 60 per cent, said Dr. Juan Alonso of Stanford University, one of the side event’s panel members.

As for the 737s made in the 1960s and 70s, they are much less fuel efficient and pollute about 20 per cent more than today’s jets, Alonso said.

“More dramatic changes are needed” in the industry to boost fuel efficiency and reduce emissions, Alonso said.

This means changing everything: the design of aircraft, what kind of fuel they use, what path they travel, their altitude, and how they take off and land.

For example, a direct landing, instead of the holding patterns and turns that many aircraft now make, saves a lot of fuel, Alonso said.

Speakers on the panel admitted there will be trade-offs in what improvements are made and which measures are taken, as policymakers negotiate what climate impacts should be avoided and where.

As it stands now, world-wide, aircraft only produce about three per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but that could rise to five per cent in 2050 if no action is taken.

The contribution of air traffic in the Arctic to these emissions worldwide is miniscule compared to what is produced in total.

But the effect is much stronger in the Arctic, where aircraft emissions have a link to warming.

Airplane traces — those lines you see high in the sky left from a jet’s passage — lead to the production of thicker heat-trapping clouds.

And soot from jet exhaust, when it falls in the Arctic, has an intense impact on the environment when it lands on snow or ice.

The impact of soot is magnified from 10 to 100 times in the Arctic because the dark particles are magnets for heat on the ice and snow, said Andreas Stohl of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research at a Dec. 7 side event, also U.S.-sponsored.

The majority of soot that falls in the Arctic comes from vehicles, industries and open burning that takes place far the Arctic, but the soot is right “at the heart of the feedback process because starts to melt the snow and ice,” Stohl said.

To start the process of “greening” the aviation industry, the U.S. will establish an international think tank on aviation and climate change.

To help the airline industry pay for what it needs to do — such as limiting taxi times on the tarmac — new taxes may slapped on every airline passenger ticket.

Still, the U.S. commitment to limit greenhouse gas emissions from aviation, which Canada will follow, falls short of what Europe plans to do.

The U.S. says it will stop growth of its aviation-produced emissions by 2020 and make “absolute reductions” in its emissions by 2050.

The EU has already proposed immediate cuts of 10 per cent below 2005 emission levels.

The EU wants these targets to be implemented globally and to apply to all countries — including Canada and the U.S.

The EU also wants to see a similar target of a 20 per cent cut below 2005 emission levels for international shipping, which is also a source of soot in the Arctic.