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Aviation and the Global Atmosphere

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<strong>Aviation</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Atmosphere</strong><br />

Radiative forcing will be enhanced by any increase in <strong>the</strong> cover of thin cirrus caused by aircraft beyond that of line-shaped contrail cirrus. If <strong>the</strong> additional global cirrus<br />

cover is as large as 0.2% (<strong>the</strong> estimated upper bound for 1992; see Section 3.5.1.5), <strong>and</strong> if <strong>the</strong> optical properties of this additional cirrus are <strong>the</strong> same as for lineshaped<br />

persistent contrails (optical depth of about 0.3, as also found often for natural cirrus; see Section 3.4.1), <strong>the</strong>n <strong>the</strong> radiative forcing from <strong>the</strong> additional cirrus may<br />

be as large as 0.04 W m-2-which is twice <strong>the</strong> value for line-shaped contrail cirrus.<br />

Aircraft emissions may also change <strong>the</strong> properties of natural cirrus clouds (see Section 3.4.5). In a high-traffic region, cirrus was found to be affected by soot emissions<br />

from aircraft, causing an approximate doubling of <strong>the</strong> ice particle concentration (Ström <strong>and</strong> Ohlsson, 1998). Smaller particles cause larger optical depth for constant ice<br />

water content. Radiative forcing is strongly sensitive to particle size (see Table 3-7). As Figure 3-20 indicates, an increase in optical depth causes additional heating if<br />

<strong>the</strong> cirrus cloud was optically thin but cooling if it was optically thick (Wyser <strong>and</strong> Ström, 1998). One recent study suggests that <strong>the</strong> indirect heating effect of aviationinduced<br />

changes in cirrus ice particle number density for fixed cloud cover may be positive <strong>and</strong> comparable to or even larger than that from increases in cloud cover<br />

(Meerkötter et al., 1999).<br />

While <strong>the</strong> impact of particle changes on radiative forcing by cirrus clouds may be studied parametrically, our underst<strong>and</strong>ing is very poor with respect to o<strong>the</strong>r indirect<br />

effects. Although comprehensive investigations are missing, <strong>the</strong>re is no evidence that any of <strong>the</strong> indirect effects are important. Table 3-9 summarizes <strong>the</strong> assessment<br />

of global radiative forcing by aviation-induced cloudiness for 1992. The results for 2050 are explained in Section 3.7.<br />

Table of contents | Previous page | Next page<br />

O<strong>the</strong>r reports in this collection<br />

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/040.htm (11 von 11)08.05.2008 02:42:10<br />

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