ACRUISE

Ship exhausts are a significant source of sulfur(S)-containing aerosols to the marine atmosphere and some global models suggest the emissions cause a large negative radiative forcing by modifying cloud properties. International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations require that ships in international waters reduce their S emissions from a maximum of 3.5% to 0.5% from January 2020. This proposal addresses whether the IMO’s 2020 sulfur regulations will substantially reduce the climate cooling effect from ship pollution. ACRUISE will take advantage of this unique large-scale aerosol perturbation to challenge our most advanced models with observations across a wide range of scales. We will quantify the impact of the S regulations on atmospheric chemistry and climate in the North Atlantic and globally. Five U.K. institutes are involved to achieve these ambitious goals, bringing together expertise in marine atmospheric chemistry, aircraft observations, aerosol cloud modeling, and satellite observations.

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