Aviation and the Global Atmosphere

Aviation and the Global Atmosphere
Aviation and the Global Atmosphere
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9.1. Introduction
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The nature and composition of aircraft emissions has been described in Chapter 1, and their effects on the composition of the atmosphere are described in Chapters 2
and 3. Chapter 4 uses aircraft emissions data in modeling studies to provide chemical perturbations that feed into the ultraviolet (UV) irradiance and radiative forcing
calculations presented in Chapters 5 and 6, respectively. In this chapter, the aircraft emissions data that were used in calculations described in Chapters 4 and 6 are
presented and discussed.
Compilation of global inventories of aircraft NOx emissions has been driven by requirements for global modeling studies of the effects of these emissions on
stratospheric and tropospheric ozone (O3 ). Aircraft carbon dioxide CO2 ) emissions are easily calculated from total fuel burned. Early studies used one- (1-D) and twodimensional
(2-D) models of the atmosphere (see Section 2.2.1). Most of these early studies considered effects on the stratosphere (e.g., COMESA, 1975), but some
also included assessments of the (then) current subsonic fleet on the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (e.g., Hidalgo and Crutzen, 1977; Derwent, 1982). An
early height- and latitude-dependent emissions inventory of aircraft NOx was given by Bauer (1979), based on earlier work by A.D. Little (1975). This work was used by
Derwent (1982) in a 2-D modeling study of aircraft NO x emissions in the troposphere.
Later estimations of global aircraft emissions of NO x were still made by relatively simple methods, using fuel usage and assumed EI(NO x ) (e.g., Nüßer and Schmitt,
1990; Beck et al., 1992). Concerted efforts were subsequently made by a number of groups to construct high-quality global 3-D inventories of aircraft emissions. Such
work was undertaken for a variety of programs and purposes: United Kingdom input to ICAO Technical Working Groups (McInnes and Walker, 1992); the U.S.
Atmospheric Effects of Stratospheric Aircraft (AESA) Program (Wuebbles et al., 1993); the German "Schadstoffe in der Luftfahrt" Program (Schmitt and Brunner,
1997); and the ANCAT/EC Emissions Database Group (ANCAT/EC, 1995), which combined European efforts to produce an aircraft NOx inventory for the AERONOx Program (Gardner et al., 1997). Subsequently, methodologies for the production of global 3-D inventories of present-day aircraft NOx emissions (based on 1991-92)
have been refined and have produced results that have largely superseded earlier work. These inventories cover the 1976-92 time period and have been extended to
the 2015 forecast period. These gridded inventories-which calculate aviation emissions as distributed around the Earth in terms of latitude, longitude, and altitude-have
been produced by NASA, DLR, and ANCAT/EC for national and international work programs (Baughcum et al., 1996a,b; Schmitt and Brunner, 1997; Gardner, 1998).
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