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When working towards regulation of supersonic aviation, a comprehensive understanding of the global climate effect of supersonic aviation is required in order to develop future regulatory issues. Such research requires a comprehensive overview of existing scientific literature having explored the climate effect of aviation. This review article provides an overview on earlier studies assessing the climate effects of supersonic aviation, comprising non-CO2 effects. An overview on the historical evaluation of research focussing on supersonic aviation and its environmental impacts is provided, followed by an overview on concepts explored and construction of emission inventories. Quantitative estimates provided for individual effects are presented and compared. Subsequently, regulatory issues related to supersonic transport are summarised. Finally, requirements for future studies, e.g., in emission scenario construction or numerical modelling of climate effects, are summarised and main conclusions discussed.

This paper discloses a new algorithm, called sustainable supersonic fuel flow method, to complement the conceptual design of future supersonic aircraft with pollutant and greenhouse gases emissions estimation. Starting from already existing algorithms currently used to assess the environmental impact of already developed and operating aircraft, the authors suggest revisions to improve the formulations, thus extending their application. Specifically, this paper has two objectives: to support the design of future supersonic aircraft and to evaluate the impact of the exploitation of more sustainable aviation fuels, with special focus on biofuels and biofuel blends, since the conceptual design stage. The core of the algorithm developed to predict in-flight emissions of a supersonic aircraft has been validated with public data of Concorde flight experiments. In addition, corrective factors accounting for the most recently developed and certified biofuels have been included in the formulation.