Oil Patch Insider: Where does Arctic haze come from?

It has been known for some time that tiny particles called aerosols cause haze in the Arctic atmosphere at certain times of the year. And in 2009 some scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration published research indicating that these aerosols may account for as much as 45 percent of the climatic warming in the Arctic region. The NASA scientists said that two human-generated aerosols, sulfates from the burning of oil and coal and black carbon, a soot-like product of the burning of a variety of fuels, play especially important roles in this warming effect.

Now a team of scientists from Norway, Austria, Finland and Russia has published in a paper in the journal “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics,” saying that a computer simulation has indicated that 42 percent of the near-surface black carbon in the Arctic atmosphere has originated from gas flaring at oil fields, with most of the flaring-related carbon remaining fairly close to the surface rather than rising higher in the atmosphere. The burning of residential fuels also appears to make a significant contribution to atmospheric black carbon in the Arctic, the paper says.

The NASA scientists had commented that black carbon emissions have increased significantly in recent years, especially from Asia, and that precipitation that would flush particulate matter from the air is relatively sparse in the Arctic.

The paper in “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics” references “strong flaring emissions” in the region to the south of the White, Barents and Kara seas. Gas flaring at oil fields is in general banned in Alaska. Gas produced from the North Slope fields is either used as fuel gas in power stations or is re-injected into the fields to maintain oil reservoir pressures and to flush oil from reservoir rocks.

—Alan Bailey