Search

Air traffic has an increasing influence on climate; therefore identifying mitigation options to reduce the climate impact of aviation becomes more and more important. Aviation influences climate through several climate agents, which show different dependencies on the magnitude and location of emission and the spatial and temporal impacts. Even counteracting effects can occur. Therefore, it is important to analyse all effects with high accuracy to identify mitigation potentials. However, the uncertainties in calculating the climate impact of aviation are partly large (up to a factor of about 2). In this study, we present a methodology, based on a Monte Carlo simulation of an updated non-linear climate-chemistry response model AirClim, to integrate above mentioned uncertainties in the climate assessment of mitigation options. Since mitigation options often represent small changes in emissions, we concentrate on a more generalised approach and use exemplarily different normalised global air traffic inventories to test the methodology. These inventories are identical in total emissions but differ in the spatial emission distribution. We show that using the Monte Carlo simulation and analysing relative differences between scenarios lead to a reliable assessment of mitigation potentials. In a use case we show that the presented methodology can be used to analyse even small differences between scenarios with mean flight altitude variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Source attribution of ozone radiative forcing (RF) is a prerequisite for developing adequate emission mitigation strategies with regards to climate impact. Decadal means of ozone fields from transient climate-chemistry simulations (1960–2019) are analysed and the temporal development of ozone RF resulting from individual NOx sources, e.g. road traffic, industry and air traffic, is investigated. We calculated an ozone production efficiency which is mainly dependent on the altitude of NOx emission and on the amount of background NOx with values varying over one order of magnitude. Air traffic and lightning are identified as NOx sources with a two and five times higher ozone production efficiency, respectively, than ground based sources. Second, radiative efficiency of source attributed ozone (i.e. total induced radiative flux change per column ozone) shows clear dependence on latitudinal structure of the ozone anomaly and, to a lesser extent, to its altitude. Lightning induced ozone shows the highest radiative efficiency because lightning primarily enhances ozone in low latitudes in the mid-troposphere (higher altitudes). Superimposed on these effects, a saturation effect causes a decreasing radiative efficiency with increasing background ozone concentrations. Changes in RF attributed to NOx induced ozone from 1960 to 2019 are controlled by three factors: changes in emissions, changes in ozone production efficiency and changes in the radiative efficiency. Leading effect is emission increase, but changes in ozone production efficiency increase ozone RF by a factor of three for air traffic, or reduce ozone RF by around 30% for ships. Additionally, changes in the radiative efficiency due to saturation effects change ozone RF by 2–5%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Impacts of commercial aircraft operation upon the environment, which are caused primarily from emissions of C O 2 , N O x and the formation of contrails, are matter of growing concern, as aviation is one of the fastest developing industrial sectors worldwide and the awareness of its effects is expanding. Recent research has focused on the cost-benefit potential of different mitigation strategies, which optimize flight trajectories with respect to climate and economy, but most of these mitigation strategies cannot be implemented in the near future due to technical challenges. The objective of this paper is to present an interim mitigation strategy, which bridges this time period. In analogy to military exclusion zones, climate restricted airspaces (CRA) are defined based on 3-D climate change functions, characterizing the environmental impact caused by an aircraft emission at a certain location. Regions with climate costs greater than a threshold value are closed in the corresponding month; others are cleared for air traffic. To estimate the cost-benefit potential of this strategy, a preliminary analysis is conducted on the route from Helsinki (EFHK) to Miami (KMIA). Affected flight trajectories are re-routed optimally around resulting CRA with regard to monetary costs for varying threshold values. Therefore, flight simulation algorithms are developed, which solve a non-linear optimal control problem. For each optimized flight trajectory corresponding average temperature response (ATR) and cash operating costs (COC) are expressed relative to a reference great circle trajectory with constant Mach number and compared with the climate mitigation potential of climate optimized trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]