Various aircraft routing options for air traffic simulation in the chemistry-climate model EMAC 2.53: AirTraf 2.0

• Main Authors: Yamashita, Hiroshi, Yin, Feijia, Grewe, Volker, Jöckel, Patrick, Matthes, Sigrun, Kern, Bastian, Dahlmann, Katrin, Frömming, Christine
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2019-331; https://gmd.copernicus.org/preprints/gmd-2019-331/

Climate impact of aviation is expected to increase further. Aircraft routings are an important measure for climate impact reductions. To find an effective aircraft routing strategy for reducing the impact, the first version of the submodel AirTraf has been developed; this submodel can simulate global air traffic in the ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model. This paper describes the updated submodel AirTraf 2.0. Seven new aircraft routing options are introduced, including contrail avoidance, minimum economic costs, and minimum climate impact. Example simulations of the new routing options are presented by using around 100 north-Atlantic flights of an Airbus A330 aircraft for a typical winter day. The results clearly show that the family of optimum flight trajectories (three-dimensional) varies according to the routing options. The comparison of the results for various routing options reveals characteristics of the routing with respect to air traffic performances. The minimum cost option obtains a trade-off solution between the minimum time and the minimum fuel solutions. The aircraft routings for contrail avoidance and minimum climate impact reduce the potential climate impact, which is estimated by using algorithmic Climate Change Functions, whereas these two routings increase flight operating costs. A trade-off between the aircraft operating costs and the climate impact is confirmed. The simulation results are compared with literature data and the consistency of the submodel AirTraf 2.0 is verified.