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Found 1 result for Aviation and global climate change in the 21st century/Atmospheric Environment[Jour] AND 43[volume] AND 3520[page] and 2009[pdat]
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. 2009 Jul;43(22):3520-3537.
doi: 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2009.04.024. Epub 2009 Apr 19.

Aviation and global climate change in the 21st century

David S Lee  1 , David W Fahey  2 , Piers M Forster  3 , Peter J Newton  4 , Ron C N Wit  5 , Ling L Lim  1 , Bethan Owen  1 , Robert Sausen  6
Affiliations

Aviation and global climate change in the 21st century

David S Lee et al. Atmos Environ (1994). 2009 Jul.

Abstract

Aviation emissions contribute to the radiative forcing (RF) of climate. Of importance are emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NO x ), aerosols and their precursors (soot and sulphate), and increased cloudiness in the form of persistent linear contrails and induced-cirrus cloudiness. The recent Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) quantified aviation's RF contribution for 2005 based upon 2000 operations data. Aviation has grown strongly over the past years, despite world-changing events in the early 2000s; the average annual passenger traffic growth rate was 5.3% yr-1 between 2000 and 2007, resulting in an increase of passenger traffic of 38%. Presented here are updated values of aviation RF for 2005 based upon new operations data that show an increase in traffic of 22.5%, fuel use of 8.4% and total aviation RF of 14% (excluding induced-cirrus enhancement) over the period 2000-2005. The lack of physical process models and adequate observational data for aviation-induced cirrus effects limit confidence in quantifying their RF contribution. Total aviation RF (excluding induced cirrus) in 2005 was ∼55 mW m-2 (23-87 mW m-2, 90% likelihood range), which was 3.5% (range 1.3-10%, 90% likelihood range) of total anthropogenic forcing. Including estimates for aviation-induced cirrus RF increases the total aviation RF in 2005-78 mW m-2 (38-139 mW m-2, 90% likelihood range), which represents 4.9% of total anthropogenic forcing (2-14%, 90% likelihood range). Future scenarios of aviation emissions for 2050 that are consistent with IPCC SRES A1 and B2 scenario assumptions have been presented that show an increase of fuel usage by factors of 2.7-3.9 over 2000. Simplified calculations of total aviation RF in 2050 indicate increases by factors of 3.0-4.0 over the 2000 value, representing 4-4.7% of total RF (excluding induced cirrus). An examination of a range of future technological options shows that substantive reductions in aviation fuel usage are possible only with the introduction of radical technologies. Incorporation of aviation into an emissions trading system offers the potential for overall (i.e., beyond the aviation sector) CO2 emissions reductions. Proposals exist for introduction of such a system at a European level, but no agreement has been reached at a global level.

Keywords: AR4; Aviation; Aviation emissions; Aviation trends; Aviation-induced cirrus; Climate change; Climate change adaptation; Climate change mitigation; Contrails; IPCC; Radiative forcing.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Schema showing the principal emissions from aviation operations and the atmospheric processes that lead to changes in radiative forcing components. Radiative forcing changes lead to climate change as measured by temperatures and sea levels, for example. Climate change creates impacts on human activities and ecosystems and can lead to societal damages. Adapted from Prather et al. (1999) and Wuebbles et al. (2007).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
(Top) Aviation fuel usage beginning in 1940 from Sausen and Schumann (2000) and extended with data from IEA (2007) and the IPCC Fa1 scenario of Henderson et al. (1999). The arrows indicate world events that potentially threatened global aviation use: the oil crises of the 1970s, the Gulf war crisis in the early 1990s, the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the World Trade Center (WTO) attack in 2001 and the global health crisis brought about by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Also shown is the growth in air passenger traffic from 1970 to 2007 in billions (1012) of revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) (near right hand axis) (source: ICAO traffic statistics from http://www.airlines.org/economics/traffic/World+Airline+Traffic.htm accessed, 19 Sept. 2007) and the annual change in RPK (far right hand axis (Note offset zero)) (Bottom) Growth in CO2 emissions in Tg CO2 yr−1 for all anthropogenic activities and from aviation fuel burn (left hand axis), and the fraction of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions represented by aviation CO2 emissions (%) (right hand axis). Note ×10 scaling of aviation CO2 emissions.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Historical and present-day inventories, and future projections of civil aviation CO2 emissions from a variety of sources: AERO2K (Eyers et al., 2005); ANCAT/EC2 (Gardner et al., 1998); CONSAVE (Berghof et al., 2005); FAST (Owen and Lee, 2006); IPCC (IPCC, 1999); NASA (Baughcum et al., 1996, Baughcum et al., 1998; Sutkus et al., 2001); SAGE (Kim et al., 2007). The open symbols indicate inventory analysis and the closed symbols indicate projections. Also shown are the CO2 emissions implied by IEA fuel sales statistics (IEA, 2007). The IEA data represent the total of civil and military usage because all kerosene sales are included. The Sausen and Schumann (2000) data are also based on IEA. The solid (dashed) lines for FAST-A1 (B2) scenarios (evaluated with the t1 technology option) and the IPCC Fa1 scenario also account for all fuel sales in order to be consistent with the IEA values ending in 2005. In the figure legend, the FAST, CONSAVE, and IPCC symbols are shown in an order that matches the scenario labels in the parentheses in each case. The IPCC Fa1 data for 1995–2006, the IEA data and the Sausen and Schumann (2000) data are also shown in Fig. 2. Adapted from Figure 5.6 of Kahn-Ribeiro et al. (2007).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Radiative forcing components from global aviation as evaluated from preindustrial times until 2005. Bars represent updated best estimates or an estimate in the case of aviation-induced cloudiness (AIC) as listed in Table 2. IPCC AR4 values are indicated by the white lines in the bars as reported by Forster et al. (2007a). The induced cloudiness (AIC) estimate includes linear contrails. Numerical values are given on the right for both IPCC AR4 (in parentheses) and updated values. Error bars represent the 90% likelihood range for each estimate (see text and Table 2, Table 3). The median value of total radiative forcing from aviation is shown with and without AIC. The median values and uncertainties for the total NOx RF and the two total aviation RFs are calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation (see text). The Total NOx RF is the combination of the CH4 and O3 RF terms, which are also shown here. The AR4 value noted for the Total NOx term is the sum of the AR4 CH4 and O3 best estimates. Note that the confidence interval for ‘Total NOx’ is due to the assumption that the RFs from O3 and CH4 are 100% correlated; however, in reality, the correlation is likely to be less than 100% but to an unknown degree (see text). The geographic spatial scale of the radiative forcing from each component and the level of scientific understanding (LOSU) are also shown on the right.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Radiative forcing from anthropogenic activities and natural (solar) changes as evaluated from preindustrial times to 2005. The geographic spatial scale of the radiative forcing from each component and the level of scientific understanding (LOSU) are also shown on the right. Adapted from Figure SPM.2 of IPCC (2007).
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Probability distribution functions (PDFs) for aviation and total anthropogenic radiative forcings (RFs) based on the results in Table 2, Table 3. All aviation RFs are from the updated 2005 emission values derived in this study. Uncertainties are expressed by a distribution about the best-estimate value that is normal for CO2 and lognormal for all other components. A one-million point Monte Carlo simulation run was used to calculate all PDFs. PDFs of aviation RFs excluding (including) aviation-induced cloudiness (AIC) are shown in Panels A and B (C and D). Panels A and C: PDFs for aviation CO2 and sum of non-CO2 RF components, and the total aviation RF. Panels B and D: aviation CO2 and total aviation RFs as a percentage of the total anthropogenic RF (Panel E). Each PDF is normalized to unity over the interval noted in parentheses in the vertical axis label. The numbers in parentheses in each panel legend are the median values of the corresponding PDFs. See text for further details.
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Aviation RF components for 2005, 2020 forecast and 2050 scenarios A1(t1), A1(t2), B1(t1), and B1(t2) as listed in Table 4. The total aviation RFs as shown by the red bars and numerically on the left do not include estimated induced-cirrus (AIC) RFs.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Aviation efficiency data for 1970–2007: passenger load factor (%) (left hand axis) and RPK and ASK per unit fuel burn (right hand axis), source ICAO.
Fig. 9
Fig. 9
Change in average aircraft size in the global fleet in terms of average number of seats per departure (source, Airbus, 2007).
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