Modeled Full‐Flight Aircraft Emissions Impacts on Air Quality and Their Sensitivity to Grid Resolution

Abstract

Aviation is a unique anthropogenic source with four‐dimensional varying emissions, peaking at cruise altitudes (9–12 km). Aircraft emission budgets in the upper troposphere lower stratosphere region and their potential impacts on upper troposphere and surface air quality are not well understood. Our key objective is to use chemical transport models (with prescribed meteorology) to predict aircraft emissions impacts on the troposphere and surface air quality. We quantified the importance of including full‐flight intercontinental emissions and increased horizontal grid resolution. The full‐flight aviation emissions in the Northern Hemisphere contributed ~1.3% (mean, min–max: 0.46, 0.3–0.5 ppbv) and 0.2% (0.013, 0.004–0.02 μg/m3) of total O3 and PM2.5 concentrations at the surface, with Europe showing slightly higher impacts (1.9% (O3 0.69, 0.5–0.85 ppbv) and 0.5% (PM2.5 0.03, 0.01–0.05 μg/m3)) than North America (NA) and East Asia. We computed seasonal aviation‐attributable mass flux vertical profiles and aviation perturbations along isentropic surfaces to quantify the transport of cruise altitude emissions at the hemispheric scale. The comparison of coarse (108 × 108 km2) and fine (36 × 36 km2) grid resolutions in NA showed ~70 times and ~13 times higher aviation impacts for O3 and PM2.5 in coarser domain. These differences are mainly due to the inability of the coarse resolution simulation to capture nonlinearities in chemical processes near airport locations and other urban areas. Future global studies quantifying aircraft contributions should consider model resolution and perhaps use finer scales near major aviation source regions.

Influence of Aviation Emission on the Particle Number Concentration near Zurich Airport

“…The aforementioned studies provide direct observations of the aviation impacts, but further studies are needed for a comprehensive assessment of the whole area around the airport for an extended time span. Air quality models are currently the most practical way to evaluate the effects of pollution emissions. − The global or regional air quality models have already been applied to assess the mass-based impacts of aircraft particulate matter emission. ,− However, there is scarce particle number-based assessment due to the limited emission data and the difficulties in modeling the number-based aerosol dynamics…”

Tracer study to estimate the transport of cruise altitude aviation emissions in Northern Hemisphere

“…relatively more tracer towards lower altitudes and to the surface layer along the isentropes (Vennam et al, 2017) during winter season. Another interesting pattern during spring and autumn seasons is that higher tracer was seen in the Himalayas and North India region, though these regions have relatively lower aviation emissions.…”

“…Additional description of the WRF configuration and evaluation of the WRF outputs against multiple observation datasets 25 are discussed in Vennam et al, 2017. A finer scale vertical resolution was used in this modelling study to improve the characterization of vertical transport in the model, and avoid potential numerical diffusion.…”

“…Multiple modeling studies (Gauss et al, 2006;Kohler et al, 2007;Arunachalam et al, 2011;Woody et al, 2011;5 Vennam et al, 2015;Cameron et al, 2017;Vennam et al, 2017) have investigated the aviation-attributable perturbations due to aircraft emissions from LTO and CAAE at local, regional to global scales and their role in causing human health effects (Stettler et al, 2011;Levy et al, 2012;Morita et al, 2014;Yim et al, 2015). All these studies used the traditional approach to assess the impacts of any individual emission source in atmosphere by calculating differences between 'with emission source (unperturbed)' and 'without emission source (perturbed)' modeling scenarios.…”

PM2.5 decadal data in cold vs. mild climate airports: COVID-19 era and a call for sustainable air quality policy

“…Aside from particles, engines exhaust from aircraft produces several toxic gases such as NO x , CO, SO 2 , and other greenhouses gases (Bhattacharjee et al 2015 ; Harrison et al 2015 ). Airborne particles related to commercial aviation have been shown to be emitted predominantly during aircraft takeoff, landing, or idling activities, thus affecting airport regions (Camero 2019 ; Mazaheri et al 2011 ; Vennam et al 2017 ). The aircraft idling practice is not only harmful to human health, but it also is expensive, it can damage the engine, and it is ineffective to warm up the engine (Bern 2019 ).…”