Abstract
The strong growth rate of the aviation industry in recent years has created significant challenges in terms of environmental impact. Air traffic contributes to climate change through the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other non-CO2 effects, and the associated climate impact is expected to soar further. The mitigation of CO2 contributions to the net climate impact can be achieved using novel propulsion, jet fuels, and continuous improvements of aircraft efficiency, whose solutions lack in immediacy. On the other hand, the climate impact associated with non-CO2 emissions, being responsible for two-thirds of aviation radiative forcing, varies highly with geographic location, altitude, and time of the emission. Consequently, these effects can be reduced by planning proper climate-aware trajectories. To investigate these possibilities, this paper presents a survey on operational strategies proposed in the literature to mitigate aviation’s climate impact. These approaches are classified based on their methodology, climate metrics, reliability, and applicability. Drawing upon this analysis, future lines of research on this topic are delineated.
Highlights
The aviation sector plays an important role in international mobility
In [59], it was shown through air traffic control mathematical simulator (RAMS) applied to European airspace that by restricting the cruise altitude to prevent the formation of contrails determined using potential contrail coverage, it is possible to mitigate the climate impacts by accepting an increase of only 4% in fuel burn and maximally one minute’s delay in arrival time
This paper surveyed the recent operational techniques proposed in the literature to mitigate the climate impacts of non-CO2 emissions
Summary
The aviation sector plays an important role in international mobility. Currently, aviation is responsible for about 3–5% of total global warming [1]. The influential parameters causing this development are, e.g., global population growth, metropolitanization, marketing expansions, as well as technological evolution [2]. Such a growth rate leads to a critical increase in environmental impacts. The aviation-induced climate impact consists of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and of non-CO2 effects. CO2 and non-CO2 effects induce a change in the Earth’s radiation balance between incoming solar radiation and thermal outgoing radiation. This radiative imbalance is referred to as radiative forcing (RF). It is important to note that non-CO2 emissions are responsible for two-thirds of the global aviation RF [1,4]
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