Impact of Aircraft Emissions on the Global Atmosphere
Abstract
Aviation is a very fast growing economic sector. For instance, in 1998 the number of passengers travelling with Deutsche Lufthansa grew by 9% relative to the previous year. Globally the annual increase rate in air transportation is more than 5%. The rapidly increasing demand for air transport outpaces technological improvements in aircraft and improvements in air traffic management systems: the mean annual increase rate of fuel burn was 2.2% for the years 1985 to 1995. Similar increase rates are expected for the future. In the following we consider various individual contributions to the radiative forcing and concentrate on 1992 and 2050. While the current and past emissions of aviation are reasonably well known, we have no reliable forecasts of the future. Hence, we make use of emission scenarios, which have been developed for various economic and technological assumptions. We study in greater detail the aviation scenario Fa1 that makes similar economic assumptions as the IPCC scenario IS92a for all anthropogenic emissions. In the latter scenario the CO2 concentration increases by 0.6% annually. The aviation scenario Fa1 assumes a mean annual increase rate of 1.7% for the fuel burn until 2050.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADP010588
Entities
People
- Robert Sausen
- Ulrich Schumann