An integrated meteo-marine and ship modelling system for air quality simulations along ship routes: first results

The capability of performing an accurate and reliable assessment of the environmental impact of the different pollution sources is becoming one of the relevant topics both for the scientific community and policymakers. In the field of maritime shipping and navigation, acquiring detailed awareness of ship emissions and reporting reliable data is considered a fundamental element for shipping companies, public and environmental institutions, and ship designers. In this context, an integrated system has been developed by exploiting the meteo-marine modelling and forecasting resources available at LaMMA Consortium. This work represents a first implementation, to be further improved in forthcoming activities. It comprises mainly three modelling units: i) meteo-marine modelling-forecasting; ii) pollution dispersion modelling; iii) ship performance and emission modelling. The implemented system is able of simulating the complex interaction of meteo-marine conditions with the consequent ship powering responses, providing detailed simulations along each route. Each vessel is modelled employing state of the art first principle models keeping into account detailed ship specific technical data. Results are reported regarding some numerical tests performed on the system to evaluate its capability to show the different roles of the environmental conditions on fuel consumption and consequent pollutant emission and fate in the atmosphere. Two different scenarios are considered along the same Mediterranean Sea routes: i) a voyage in completely calm conditions, with lower fuel consumption, but also lower pollutant dispersion in the atmosphere; ii) a voyage during very heavy weather conditions, with higher fuel consumption, but also higher pollutant dispersion. The promising results include alternative routes at different distances from the Mediterranean coasts. The complexity introduced by the Mediterranean coastal orography and by the presence of several islands (i.e. Corse, Sardinia, Sicily) provides the study with an interesting prospective for the meteorological community, and presents also a novel contribution for the possible implementation of impact analyses on such a high environmental value area.