Identification

Title

Potential impacts on ozone and climate from a proposed fleet of supersonic aircraft

Abstract

There has been renewed interest in developing commercial supersonic transport aircraft due to the increased overall demands by the public for air travel, the aspiration for more intercontinental travel, and the desire for shorter flight times. Various companies and academic institutions have been actively considering the designs of such supersonic aircraft. As these new designs are developed, the environmental impact on ozone and climate of these fleets need to be explored. This study examines one such proposed commercial supersonic fleet of 55-seater that is projected to fly at Mach 2.2, corresponding to cruise altitudes of 17-20 km, and which would burn 122.32 Tg of fuel and emit 1.78 Tg of NOx each year. Our analyses indicate this proposed fleet would cause a 0.74% reduction in global column ozone (similar to 2 Dobson Units), which is mainly attributed to the large amounts of nitrogen oxides released in the atmosphere from the supersonic aircraft. The maximum ozone loss occurs at the tropics in the fall season, with a reduction of -1.4% in the total column ozone regionally. The stratospheric-adjusted radiative forcing on climate from this fleet was derived based on changes in atmospheric concentrations of ozone (59.5 mW/m(2)), water vapor (10.1 mW/m(2)), black carbon (-3.9 mW/m(2)) and sulfate aerosols (-20.3 mW/m(2)), resulting in a net non-CO2, non-contrail forcing of 45.4 mW/m(2), indicating an overall warming effect.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70k2dhf

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact