Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Atmospheric/climatic effects of aircraft emissions

Conference ·
OSTI ID:471054
 [1]
  1. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA (United States)
Exhaust emissions from aircraft include oxides of nitrogen (NO{sub x}), water vapor (H{sub 2}O), sulfur dioxide (SO{sub 2}), carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC) and particles (soot and sulfates). These emissions are small compared to industrial/urban surface emissions. However, because (1) atmospheric residence times of exhaust constituents are longer at altitude, particularly in the stratosphere, than they are in the boundary layer, (2) their background concentrations at altitude are lower than those near the surface, (3) the radiation balance is the more sensitive to atmospheric trace constituents the colder the temperature aloft and (4) inter-hemispheric mixing of aircraft effluents is inhibited, aircraft emissions near and above the tropopause and polewards of 40 degrees latitude can be environmentally critical. That`s why atmospheric/climatic effects of aircraft emissions have again received scientific, economic and political scrutiny in the last few years, motivated by growth of subsonic traffic at about 5% per year over the past two decades and the advent of a technologically feasible operation of a supersonic high speed commercial transport (HSCT) fleet.
OSTI ID:
471054
Report Number(s):
CONF-960420--; ISBN 0-884736-02-5
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English