Clean air policies are key for successfully mitigating Arctic warming

Knut von Salzen (1) , Cynthia H. Whaley (1) , Susan C. Anenberg (2) , Rita van Dingenen (3) , Zbigniew Klimont (4) , Mark G. Flanner (5) , Rashed Mahmood (6, 7) , Stephen R. Arnold (8) , Stephen Beagley (9) , Rong-You Chien (10) , Jesper H. Christensen (11, 12) , Sabine Eckhardt (13) , Annica M. L. Ekman (14, 15) , Nikolaos Evangeliou (13) , Greg Faluvegi (16, 17) , Joshua S. Fu (10) , Michael Gauss (18) , Wanmin Gong (9) , Jens L. Hjorth (11) , Ulas Im (11, 12) , Srinath Krishnan (15, 19) , Kaarle Kupiainen (20) , Thomas Kühn (21, 22) , Joakim Langner (23) , Kathy S. Law (24) , Louis Marelle (24) , Dirk Olivié (18) , Tatsuo Onishi (24) , Naga Oshima (25) , Ville-Veikko Paunu (26) , Yiran Peng (27) , David Plummer (1) , Luca Pozzoli (28, 3) , Shilpa Rao (29) , Jean-Christophe Raut (24) , Maria Sand (19) , Julia Schmale (30) , Michael Sigmond (1) , Manu A. Thomas (23) , Kostas Tsigaridis (16, 17) , Svetlana Tsyro (18) , Steven T. Turnock (31, 8) , Minqi Wang (27) , Barbara Winter (1)

1 CCCma - Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis
2 Milken Institute School of Public Health
3 JRC - European Commission - Joint Research Centre [Ispra]
4 IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [Laxenburg]
5 CLaSP - Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering
6 UQAM - Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal
7 BSC - CNS - Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputacion
8 ICAS - Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science [Leeds]
9 Air Quality Research Division [Toronto]
10 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering [Knoxville]
11 ENVS - Department of Environmental Science [Roskilde]
12 iCLIMATE Aarhus University Interdisciplinary Centre for Climate Change
13 NILU - Norwegian Institute for Air Research
14 MISU - Department of Meteorology [Stockholm]
15 Bolin Centre for Climate Research
16 CCSR - Center for Climate Systems Research [New York]
17 GISS - NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
18 MET - Norwegian Meteorological Institute [Oslo]
19 CICERO - Center for International Climate and Environmental Research [Oslo]
20 YM - Ministry of the Environment Finland
21 Department of Applied Physics [Kuopio]
22 Atmospheric Research Centre of Eastern Finland
23 SMHI - Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
24 TROPO - LATMOS
25 MRI - Meteorological Research Institute [Tsukuba]
26 SYKE - Finnish Environment Institute
27 DESS - Department of Earth System Science [Beijing]
28 FINCONS SPA
29 NIPH - Norwegian Institute of Public Health [Oslo]
30 EERL - Extreme Environments Research Laboratory
31 MOHC - Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change

A tighter integration of modeling frameworks for climate and air quality is urgently needed to assess the impacts of clean air policies on future Arctic and global climate. We combined a new model emulator and comprehensive emissions scenarios for air pollutants and greenhouse gases to assess climate and human health co-benefits of emissions reductions. Fossil fuel use is projected to rapidly decline in an increasingly sustainable world, resulting in far-reaching air quality benefits. Despite human health benefits, reductions in sulfur emissions in a more sustainable world could enhance Arctic warming by 0.8 °C in 2050 relative to the 1995-2014, thereby offsetting climate benefits of greenhouse gas reductions. Targeted and technically feasible emissions reduction opportunities exist for achieving simultaneous climate and human health co-benefits. It would be particularly beneficial to unlock a newly identified mitigation potential for carbon particulate matter, yielding Arctic climate benefits equivalent to those from carbon dioxide reductions by 2050.

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Global Changes; Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]

Knut von Salzen, Cynthia H. Whaley, Susan C. Anenberg, Rita van Dingenen, Zbigniew Klimont, et al.. Clean air policies are key for successfully mitigating Arctic warming. Communications Earth & Environment, 2022, 3, pp.222. ⟨10.1038/s43247-022-00555-x⟩. ⟨insu-03825049⟩