159 research outputs found
Aircraft Cost Index and the Future of Carbon Emissions from Air Travel
Get PDFAir travel accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions and this proportion is set to grow in the future. There are currently no large scale solutions to drastically reduce the industry’s dependence on oil. Therefore, airlines are looking to use a basket of measures to reduce fuel consumption. Optimisation of the use of cost index (CI) could be a valuable addition to this. By balancing time-dependent costs with the cost of fuel, it controls the speed of the aircraft to achieve the most economic flight time. This has a direct impact on the CO2 emissions from the aircraft, with higher speeds resulting in higher fuel consumption. The aim of this study is to assess the impact that CI has on CO2 emissions for six different aircraft models on a flight-by-flight basis and to evaluate how the CI could be affected by future impacts on the industry for a representative aircraft. Results show that a range of representative CI values for different aircraft models exist and suggest that the maximum benefit for optimising CI values occurs for long range flights. The average saving in CO2 emissions is 1%. Results show that time-related costs have the greatest effect on the optimum CI values, particularly delay costs. On the fuel side of the equation it is notable that a carbon price resulting from the implementation of a market based mechanism has little impact on the optimum CI and only reduces CO2 emissions by 0.01% in this case. The largest savings in CO2 emissions result from the use of biofuels, with reductions of between 9% and 44% for 10% and 50% blends respectively. This study also highlights the need for further research into crew and maintenance costs, cumulative costs and delay induced by congestion and climate change events, as well as policy considerations to ensure that there is a reduction in CO2 emissions. The study concludes that CI should be seen as a valuable tool in both helping to reduce CO2 emissions, as well to assess the impact of future events on the industry
Modern agglutinated foraminifera from the Hovgård ridge, fram strait, west of Spitsbergen: Evidence for a deep bottom current
Get PDFDeep-water agglutinated foraminifera on the crest of the Hovgârd Ridge, west of Spitsbergen, consist mostly of large tubular astrorhizids. At a boxcore station collected from the crest of Hovgârd Ridge at a water depth of 1169 m, the sediment surface was covered with patches of large (1 mm diameter) tubular forms, belonging mostly to the species Astrorhiza crassatina Brady, with smaller numbers of Saccorhiza, Hyperammina, and Psammosiphonella. Non-tubutar species consisted mainly of opportunistic forms, such as Psammosphaera and Reophax. The presence of large suspension-feeding tubular genera as well as opportunistic forms point to the presence of deep currents at this locality that are strong enough to disturb the benthic fauna. This is confirmed by data obtained from sediment echosounding, which exhibit lateral variation in relative sedimentation rates within the Pleistocene sedimentary drape covering the ridge, indicative of winnowing in a south-easterly direction
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