An application of backscatter Lidar to model the odour nuisance arising from aircraft tyre smoke

A Rapid-Scanning Backscatter Lidar (RASCAL) has been deployed at Heathrow and Manchester Airports to collect backscatter data from particulate emissions in the wakes of several hundred flights. The principal aim of these measurements was to characterise the dispersion of the engine exhausts, but it was found that tyre smoke was also visible, giving a signal substantially greater than that from the engines. The dispersion of odorants can be inferred from the Lidar measurements and we discuss here how an odour perception model may be applied to time series of such cross-sections to estimate the nuisance arising from the tyre smoke.