Climate impact mitigation potential of european air traffic

Air traffic contributes to anthropogenic global warming by about 5% due to CO2 emissions (about 1/3) and non-CO2 effects (about 2/3) primarily caused by emissions of NOx and water vapour as well as the formation of contrails. Since aviation is expected to maintain its trend to grow over the next decades, mitigation measures are required counteracting its negative effects upon the environment. One of the promising operational mitigation measures which has been subject of the EU project ATM4E, is climate-optimized flight planning using algorithmic climate change functions describing the climate sensitivity as a function of emission location and time. The methodology developed for the use of algorithmic climate change functions in trajectory optimization is described and results of its application to the planning of about 13,000 intra-European flights on one specific day are presented. The optimization problem is formulated as bi-objective continuous optimal control problem with climate impact and fuel burn being the two objectives. Results on individual flight basis indicate that there are three major classes of different routes which are characterized by different shapes of the corresponding Pareto-fronts. For the investigated scenario, results show a climate impact mitigation potential of about 73% which is related with a fuel penalty of 14.5%. However, a climate impact reduction of 50% can already be achieved with 0.75% additional fuel burn.Aircraft Noise and Climate Effect

Robustness of climate-optimized trajectories and mitigation Potential: flying atm4e

Aviation can reduce its climate impact by controlling its CO2-emission and non-CO2 effects, e.g. aviation-induced contrail-cirrus and ozone caused by nitrogen oxide emissions. One option is the implementation of operational measures which aim to avoid those atmospheric regions that are in particular sensitive to non-CO2 aviation effects, e.g. where persistent contrails form. Quantitative estimates of mitigation potentials of such climate-optimized aircraft trajectories are required, when working towards sustainable aviation. Results are presented from a comprehensive modelling approach which is working towards identifying such climate-optimized aircraft trajectories. The overall concept relies on a multi-dimensional environmental change function concept, which is capable of providing environmental impact information to air traffic management (ATM) and which in principal could include the noise and air quality impacts. A one-day case study with a weather situation containing regions with high contrail impacts for European air traffic estimated an overall climate impact reduction of about 30% for an increase of costs of 0.5%, relying on best estimate for climate impact information. The climate impact reduction and mitigation potential varies strongly with individual routes. By using a range of different climate metrics, the robustness of proposed mitigation trajectories is assessed. Sustainable ATM needs to integrate comprehensive environmental impacts and associated forecast uncertainties into route optimisation in order to identify robust eco-efficient trajectories.Aircraft Noise and Climate Effect