Hi. The Southern Gulf Islands, bunched up on the east side of Vancouver Island and within easy reach of Port Vancouver, is increasingly filled with bulk cargo ships waiting at anchor for their turn at a berth in the port. These noisy (big diesel generators running 24/7), ugly (rusting, huge — some are over 300 meters long), bright (lights all night long), polluting beasts (air, water, noise and light pollution) arrive early and loiter, sometimes for months before their turn at a berth. This idle time is wasted useless time and does not contribute to anyone’s economy. There will be particulate emissions from both the main engines and the diesel generators. I have a ton of ship movement data so I know exactly when ships arrive at and depart from which anchor sites and where those sites are within a few meters. There are also several monitors close to where the ships park.
Does anyone have any experience with this type of analysis? My initial thought is to divide time into slices depending on how many ships are nearby. All other slices will be compared to the zero ship slice. The null hypothesis is that there is no difference in particulate measures among and between the time slices. Wind direction and speed will certainly be a factor but I’m hoping to see something even without wind data. Wildfire and winter heating fires will certainly confound the analysis. Maybe I’ll avoid looking at anything with extremely high particle readings.