Impacts of climate change on the maritime industry part 2 of 3 - changes in weather patterns

• Main Author: Tan, Ming Wang.
• Other Authors: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Maritime studies
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/44976
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Global warming has become a very popular topic in recent years as many regions are hit seriously by natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes in the past few years. These catastrophes result in serious fatalities and adverse impacts on economies. Since shipping is a derived demand, it is inevitable that climate change can have a significant impact on maritime industry. Many people blamed shipping industry for worsening the degree of global warming as burning of bunker will emit greenhouse gases such as sulfur dioxide, which are efficient in trapping heat. Many actions are taken against vessel operators to reduce the emission of greenhouses gases. Vessel operators themselves are also making effort to reduce the emission by adopting slow steaming or using a cleaner fuel. However, little information about how climate change can affect shipping is available to date. There are some reports and researches which are limited to how the melting of arctic ice could create new arctic trade routes and discover new oil and gas fields. Hence, this project aims to provide insight on the impacts of climate change on both shipping lines and ports, particularly on how changes in weather patterns in Southeast and Eastern Asia will affect them. The change in weather patterns in a specific region can be observed through many aspects such as changes in precipitation and humidity level. Increase in precipitation level may leads to flooding while increase in humidity level may results in the damage of moisture sensitive cargoes.