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Latitudinal variation of the effect of aviation NOx emissions on atmospheric ozone and methane and related climate metrics

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Type

Article

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Authors

Köhler, MO 
Rädel, G 
Shine, KP 
Rogers, HL 
Pyle, JA 

Abstract

We evaluate the response to regional and latitudinal changes in aircraft NOx emissions using several climate metrics (radiative forcing (RF), Global Warming Potential (GWP), Global Temperature change Potential (GTP)). Global chemistry transport model integrations were performed with sustained perturbations in regional aircraft and aircraft-like NOx emissions. The RF due to the resulting ozone and methane changes is then calculated. We investigate the impact of emission changes for specific geographical regions (approximating to USA, Europe, India and China) and cruise altitude emission changes in discrete latitude bands covering both hemispheres. We find that lower latitude emission changes (per Tg N) cause ozone and methane RFs that are about a factor of 6 larger than those from higher latitude emission changes. The net RF is positive for all experiments. The meridional extent of the RF is larger for low latitude emissions. GWPs for all emission changes are positive, with tropical emissions having the largest values; the sign of the GTP depends on the choice of time horizon.

Description

Keywords

aircraft emissions, nitrogen oxides, greenhouse gases, radiative forcing, climate metrics

Journal Title

Atmospheric Environment

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1352-2310
1873-2844

Volume Title

64

Publisher

Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
GR acknowledges funding through the EU FP6 QUANTIFY Project. MOK acknowledges funding from NERC through the AIM Project. KS acknowledges support from the EU FP7 ECLIPSE project.