Aircraft Emissions and the Global Atmosphere

Emissions from airplanes and their potential global effects on the atmosphere have become the subject of intensive study by scientists, and are now drawing the interest of governments. Global fuel consumption has risen much faster for aviation than for other energy-use sectors. Concerns have focused on the contribution of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon dioxide (C02), water vapor (H20) and other engine effluents to the buildup of the atmosphere's greenhouse effect. Future aircraft emissions also may affect the stratosphere's ozone layer. This report describes an effort to develop long-term scenarios for emissions from aviation in order to provide a basis for assessing their potential environmental impact throughout the 21st century. Carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the current and projected subsonic aircraft fleets are the main focus of this study. The scenarios in this report were produced by a model that builds on technological and operational assumptions made by industry and government for the period through 2015. It is important to state from the outset what this report is not about. It is not a detailed examination of the environmental effects of aviation. It is not an assessment of the potential for technological or operational changes that could reduce emissions from expected levels. It does not set forth a comprehensive and detailed policy prescription for limiting emissions from aviation. This report does not analyze the potential emissions of a vastly expanded fleet of supersonic aircraft, such as the proposed High-Speed Civil Transport (HSCT), although its possible environmental impacts are discussed briefly. Comments Copyright Environmental Defense Fund. Used by permission. Aviation Report, 1994, 77 pages. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/library_papers/56

[1]  Robert M. May,et al.  Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications , 1981 .

[2]  R. A. Egli,et al.  Nitrogen Oxide Emissions from Air Traffic , 1990, CHIMIA.

[3]  S. C. Davis,et al.  TRANSPORTATION ENERGY DATA BOOK: EDITION 13 , 1993 .

[4]  Rudolf Modley,et al.  Aerospace facts and figures , 1963 .

[5]  Richard S. Stolarski,et al.  The atmospheric effects of stratospheric aircraft , 1993 .

[6]  D. Hauglustaine,et al.  The importance of atmospheric chemistry in the calculation of radiative forcing on the climate system , 1994 .

[7]  Nebojsa Nakicenovic,et al.  “The Dynamics of Energy Systems and the Logistic Substitution Model” (1979) , 1978, The Future of Nature.

[8]  H. Schiff,et al.  The ozone war , 1978 .

[9]  Nawal K. Taneja.  Airline traffic forecasting: A regression-analysis approach , 1978 .

[10]  J. Edmonds,et al.  Global Energy: Assessing the Future , 1985 .

[11]  Richard S. Stolarski,et al.  The Atmospheric Effects of Stratospheric Aircraft: a First Program Report , 1992 .

[12]  Michael P. Todaro,et al.  World Development Report 1990. , 1990 .

[13]  David L. Greene,et al.  Energy-Efficiency Improvement Potential of Commercial Aircraft , 1992 .

[14]  Hyder Lakhani,et al.  Diffusion of environment-saving technological change— a petroleum refining case study☆ , 1975 .

[15]  On the effect of emissions from aircraft engines on the state of the atmosphere , 1994 .

[16]  Henry Hidalgo,et al.  The tropospheric and stratospheric composition perturbed by NO x emissions of high‐altitude aircraft , 1977 .

[17]  Colin E. Johnson,et al.  Impact of aircraft and surface emissions of nitrogen oxides on tropospheric ozone and global warming , 1992, Nature.

[18]  J. Houghton,et al.  Climate change 1992 : the supplementary report to the IPCC scientific assessment , 1992 .