Quantifying the spatial and temporal non-CO2 effect of aviation by using algorithmic climate change functions

<p>Aviation aims to reduce its climate impact by adopting climate-optimized aircraft trajectories, avoiding those regions of the atmosphere where aviation emission have a large climate impact. For this purpose, dedicated MET services have to be made available to the flight planning procedures, which need to be predicted with current numerical weather prediction models.</p><p>In order to represent spatially and temporally resolved information on the climate impact in terms of future temperature changes due to aviation emissions at a given time and location in such an advanced MET service, we propose to use algorithmic climate change functions (aCCFs) developed in earlier research projects. They include CO₂and non-CO₂ effects, comprising nitrogen oxide (NO_x), water vapour and contrail-cirrus. These aCCFs allow to derive such climate impact information for flight planning directly from operational meteorological weather forecast data. By combining the individual aCCFs of water vapour, NO_x and contrail-cirrus, also merged non-CO₂ aCCFs can be generated.</p><p>With this study we aim &#160;to identify specific weather situations which have the potential to provide a robust climate impact reduction despite uncertainties. This work is part of the SESAR project FlyATM4E. For this purpose, a systematic analysis of the meteorological conditions and situations is required. We will present the characteristic water vapour, NO_x induced and contrail-cirrus aCCFs for a set of specific weather patterns based on 2018 reanalysis data. A detailed analysis of the variation in aCCFs will be presented, including the dependency of individual and merged aCCFs to seasonal cycle, different synoptical weather situations and cruise altitude.</p><p>&#160;</p><p>Acknowledgement:</p><p>The current study has been supported by FlyATM4E project, which has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 891317 under European Union&#8217;s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.&#160;</p>