The impact of global aviation NOx emissions on tropospheric composition changes from 2005 to 2011

Abstract

The impact of aviation NOx emissions from 2005 to 2011 on the chemical composition of the atmosphere has been investigated on the basis of integrations of the 3-D global chemical and transport model, STOCHEM-CRI with the novel CRIv2-R5 chemistry scheme. A base case simulation without aircraft NOx emissions and integrations with NOx emissions from aircraft are inter-compared. The sensitivity of the global atmosphere to varying the quantity and the geographical distribution of the global annual aviation NOx emissions is assessed by performing, for the first time, a series of integrations based on changing the total mass and distribution of aircraft NOx emissions derived from air traffic movements recorded between 2005 and 2011. The emissions of NOx from the global fleet based on actual records of air traffic movements between 2005 and 2011 increased the global tropospheric annual mean burden of O3 by 1.0Tg and decreased the global tropospheric annual mean burden of CH4 by 2.5Tg. The net NOy and O3 production increases by 0.5% and 1%, respectively between 2005 and 2011 in total. At cruise altitude, the absolute increase in the modelled O3 mixing ratios is found to be up to 0.7ppb between 2005 and 2011 at 25°N–50°N.