TY - JOUR
T1 - Potential Impacts of Supersonic Aircraft Emissions on Ozone and Resulting Forcing on Climate
T2 - An Update on Historical Analysis
AU - Zhang, Jun
AU - Wuebbles, Donald
AU - Kinnison, Douglas
AU - Baughcum, Steven L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Simone Tilmes for helping with SST/ICE data files to drive the WACCM simulations, and Jean‐Francois Lamarque and Francis Vitt for providing suggestions on running PORT. The authors acknowledge the high‐performance computing support provided by NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The University of Illinois received support in part from the Boeing Company and from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (13‐C‐AJFE‐UI‐029).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021. The Authors.
PY - 2021/3/27
Y1 - 2021/3/27
N2 - Commercial aircraft flying at supersonic speeds in the lower stratosphere are being discussed once again after a hiatus of almost 20 years. Potential environmental effects from fleets of such aircraft need to be understood for their possible impacts on stratospheric ozone; levels of stratospheric ozone determine the amount of biologically harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun reaching the Earth's surface. Changes in the distribution and concentrations of ozone also have implications on climate. This study evaluates the potential impact on stratospheric ozone and on climate forcing from different levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and water vapor (H2O) emissions from supersonic transport. Toward establishing a baseline relative to prior studies, we also compare these new analyses with results from the 1999 aviation assessments, using the same aviation emissions. Despite the understanding of atmospheric processes used in studying chemistry-climate interactions have been greatly enhanced over the last 20 years, this study finds that, for the baseline scenario, the resulting effects on stratospheric ozone are similar to those from many of the models in the prior assessment, although with a stronger ozone sensitivity to NOx emissions. We show that the resulting ozone effects largely depend on the NOx and H2O emission levels and the net changes in stratospheric ozone are determined by the chemical interactions between different ozone production and depletion cycles. We also calculate the radiative forcing impact for the resulting changes in the distributions of ozone and H2O, and confirm that stratospheric H2O emissions are an important factor in potential climate impacts from supersonic aircraft emissions.
AB - Commercial aircraft flying at supersonic speeds in the lower stratosphere are being discussed once again after a hiatus of almost 20 years. Potential environmental effects from fleets of such aircraft need to be understood for their possible impacts on stratospheric ozone; levels of stratospheric ozone determine the amount of biologically harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun reaching the Earth's surface. Changes in the distribution and concentrations of ozone also have implications on climate. This study evaluates the potential impact on stratospheric ozone and on climate forcing from different levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and water vapor (H2O) emissions from supersonic transport. Toward establishing a baseline relative to prior studies, we also compare these new analyses with results from the 1999 aviation assessments, using the same aviation emissions. Despite the understanding of atmospheric processes used in studying chemistry-climate interactions have been greatly enhanced over the last 20 years, this study finds that, for the baseline scenario, the resulting effects on stratospheric ozone are similar to those from many of the models in the prior assessment, although with a stronger ozone sensitivity to NOx emissions. We show that the resulting ozone effects largely depend on the NOx and H2O emission levels and the net changes in stratospheric ozone are determined by the chemical interactions between different ozone production and depletion cycles. We also calculate the radiative forcing impact for the resulting changes in the distributions of ozone and H2O, and confirm that stratospheric H2O emissions are an important factor in potential climate impacts from supersonic aircraft emissions.
KW - climate
KW - ozone
KW - supersonic aircraft
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U2 - 10.1029/2020JD034130
DO - 10.1029/2020JD034130
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85103038597
VL - 126
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
SN - 2169-897X
IS - 6
M1 - e2020JD034130
ER -