High-latitude gas flaring impacts on Arctic climate

Abstract

A large reduction of high-latitude gas petroleum activity since the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been increasing again in the recent 2000s. The accompanying gas flaring produces black carbon, a typical warming aerosol. However, to date, precise emission data in association with the high-latitude gas flaring activity, which are potentially an important source of black carbon at high latitudes are currently missing in many places and even geographically misplaced. In this study, we examined the impacts of black carbon emission from the gas flaring on the Arctic climate in 2000s. We prescribed realistic black carbon emission by the gas flaring over high-latitude in the model simulation and found that Arctic surface air temperature increase is highly sensitive to the prescribed black carbon source. By analyzing the simulation results in detail, we found that the increase in net incoming radiation by the black carbon plays a major role.