J. T. Wilkerson

The effects of aircraft on climate and pollution. Part I: Numerical methods for treating the subgrid evolution of discrete size- and composition-resolved contrails from all commercial flights worldwide

This paper provides and evaluates mass conservative, positive-definite, unconditionally-stable, and non-iterative numerical techniques for simulating the evolution of discrete, size- and composition-resolved aerosol and contrail particles in individual aircraft exhaust plumes in a global or regional 3-D atmospheric model and coupling the subgrid exhaust plume information to the grid scale. Such treatment represents a new method of simulating the effects of aircraft on climate, contrails, and atmospheric composition. Microphysical processes solved within each plume include size-resolved coagulation among and between aerosol and contrail particles and their inclusions, aerosol-to-hydrometeor particle ice and liquid nucleation, deposition/sublimation, and condensation/evaporation. Each plume has its own emission and supersaturation, and the spreading and shearing of each plumes cross-section are calculated as a function of time. Aerosol- and contrail-particle core compositions are tracked for each size and affect optical properties in each plume. When line contrails sublimate/evaporate, their size- and composition-resolved aerosol cores and water vapor are added to the grid scale where they affect large-scale clouds. Algorithm properties are analyzed, and the end-result model is evaluated against in situ and satellite data.

The effects of aircraft on climate and pollution. Part II: 20-year impacts of exhaust from all commercial aircraft worldwide treated individually at the subgrid scale

This study examines the 20-year impacts of emissions from all commercial aircraft flights worldwide on climate, cloudiness, and atmospheric composition. Aircraft emissions from each individual flight worldwide were modeled to evolve from the subgrid to grid scale with the global model described and evaluated in Part I of this study. Simulations with and without aircraft emissions were run for 20 years. Aircraft emissions were found to be responsible for -6% of Arctic surface global warming to date, -1.3% of total surface global warming, and -4% of global upper tropospheric warming. Arctic warming due to aircraft slightly decreased Arctic sea ice area. Longer simulations should result in more warming due to the further increase in CO2. Aircraft increased atmospheric stability below cruise altitude and decreased it above cruise altitude. The increase in stability decreased cumulus convection in favor of increased stratiform cloudiness. Aircraft increased total cloud fraction on average. Aircraft increased surface and upper tropospheric ozone by -0.4% and -2.5%, respectively and surface and upper-tropospheric peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) by -0.1% and -5%, respectively. Aircraft emissions increased tropospheric OH, decreasing column CO and CH4 by -1.7% and -0.9%, respectively. Aircraft emissions increased human mortality worldwide by -620 (-240 to 4770) deaths per year, with half due to ozone and the rest to particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5).

A Low-Order Contrail Model for use with Global-Scale Climate Models

are incorporated in the model. We also show some examples of the application of this model and compare them to other computational contrail studies.