Arctic Haze Pollution Thickens Despite Russia Cuts

October 26, 2006

Nations such as Russia, the United States and Canada are having a negative affect on the Arctic. The sulfur and nitrogen oxide pollution from coal-burning power plants are adding to a brown haze of pollution surrounding the Arctic Circle. Airborne’s clean coal technology can help. It can remove virtually all the NOx, SOx and mercury from coal-burning stations and make these “dirty” power stations into “clean” sites. 

The following is the relative information from the article “Arctic Haze Pollution Thickens Despite Russia Cuts” byReuters.

OSLO -- Haze polluting the Arctic has thickened in the past decade despite lower emissions by Russian factories, perhaps because of more forest fires or pollution from Asia, an international report said on Thursday.

"The haze is coming back again," said Lars-Otto Reiersen, head of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programmer (AMAP), which handed a report on acids and haze to officials from eight Arctic Council nations in Salekhard, Russia.

The study said the worst sulfur pollutants in the Arctic, by Russian metals smelters and industries far to the south, had declined in recent years with lower emissions. Many lakes and soils blighted by acid rain and snow were recovering, it said.

But some other toxins in the almost uninhabited region, including nitrogen oxides that may be carried by winds from industries or forest fires to the south, seemed to be rising.

A brownish haze, which can cut visibility in the near pristine Arctic in spring, had started to increase in the late 1990s after clearing since the 1970s, according to measurements in Barrow, Alaska. Haze levels were still below the 1980s.

Warmer temperatures in recent decades mean the forest fire season in northern forests starts earlier and ends later. Most scientists say fossil fuels burnt in power plants, factories and cars release heat-trapping gases that are raising temperatures.

CHINA

Pollution from growing economies such as China may be adding to haze, whose particles can also fall as acid rain or snow. "The importance of Asian sources to acidification and Arctic haze pollution ... is not yet clear," the report said.

The AMAP report urged Arctic Council nations -- Russia, the United States, Canada and the five Nordic states -- to consider tighter limits on emissions of industrial pollutants.

It said that existing international rules under the U.N.'s Gothenburg Protocol, which sets ceilings on industrial pollutants until 2010, were no longer enough to guarantee a longer-term decline in acidification, it said.

Arctic haze was first noted in the 1950s by Canadian pilots puzzled by low visibility over the pristine ice.

Studies showed it comprised tiny particles mainly blown from industrial centers far to the south. Haze can blanket areas up to 200 km (120 miles) across and cut visibility to a few km.

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