Abstract
Abstract. The uptake of water by contrails in ice-supersaturated air and the release of water after ice particle advection and sedimentation dehydrates the atmosphere at flight levels and redistributes humidity mainly to lower levels. The dehydration is investigated by coupling a plume-scale contrail model with a global aerosol–climate model. The contrail model simulates all the individual contrails forming from global air traffic for meteorological conditions as defined by the climate model. The computed contrail cirrus properties compare reasonably with theoretical concepts and observations. The mass of water in aged contrails may exceed 106 times the mass of water emitted from aircraft. Many of the ice particles sediment and release water in the troposphere, on average 700 m below the mean flight levels. Simulations with and without coupling are compared. The drying at contrail levels causes thinner and longer-lived contrails with about 15 % reduced contrail radiative forcing (RF). The reduced RF from contrails is on the order of 0.06 W m−2, slightly larger than estimated earlier because of higher soot emissions. For normal traffic, the RF from dehydration is small compared to interannual variability. A case with emissions increased by 100 times is used to overcome statistical uncertainty. The contrails impact the entire hydrological cycle in the atmosphere by reducing the total water column and the cover by high- and low-level clouds. For normal traffic, the dehydration changes contrail RF by positive shortwave and negative longwave contributions on the order of 0.04 W m−2, with a small negative net RF. The total net RF from contrails and dehydration remains within the range of previous estimates.
Highlights
Contrail ice particles grow by the uptake of humidity from ambient ice-supersaturated air masses and release their water content after sedimentation or advection with the wind into regions with lower relative humidity. Knollenberg (1972) derived the ice mass inventory in a contrail for a single aircraft from measurements and found that the water present as ice in the contrail exceeds that in the original aircraft exhaust by at least 4 orders of magnitude
Quantitative results are from run 1
The emissions included in CAM are derived from 182.2 Tg of annual fuel consumption, of which CoCiP analyses 83.2 %
Summary
Contrail ice particles grow by the uptake of humidity from ambient ice-supersaturated air masses and release their water content after sedimentation or advection with the wind into regions with lower relative humidity. Knollenberg (1972) derived the ice mass inventory in a contrail for a single aircraft from measurements and found that the water present as ice in the contrail exceeds that in the original aircraft exhaust by at least 4 orders of magnitude. Contrail ice particles grow by the uptake of humidity from ambient ice-supersaturated air masses and release their water content after sedimentation or advection with the wind into regions with lower relative humidity. Small relative changes of humidity in the troposphere and small absolute changes in the tropopause region have large effects on radiative forcing (Riese et al, 2012). In regions with heavy air traffic, contrail cirrus persistence can modify or even suppress natural cirrus formation (Unterstrasser, 2014), with consequences for radiative forcing (Burkhardt and Kärcher, 2011). Falling ice particles may enhance precipitation from mixed-phase or warm clouds at lower altitudes by increasing humidity and the liquid water content or by the Wegener–Findeisen–Bergeron process, both of which are thought to increase the likelihood of precipitation (Murcray, 1970; Korolev and Mazin, 2003; Yun and Penner, 2012). Dehydration from contrails may follow similar processes as dehydration by thin cirrus at the tropical tropopause (Jensen et al, 1996; Fueglistaler et al, 2009)
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