Stratospheric effects of rocket launch emissions.

• Main Author: Brown, Tyler F. M.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic; black carbon
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10092/104007; https://doi.org/10.26021/13105

The rate of rocket launches around the world is accelerating, driven by the rapid global development of the space industry. However, the cumulative effects of orbital launch vehicle emissions on the stratosphere are poorly understood. Individual rocket launches deposit potentially significant quantities of soot, alumina, nitrogen oxides, reactive chlorine, carbon dioxide, and water vapor into the stratosphere. To address this, a new inventory is created to catalogue the per-vehicle contributions to stratospheric emissions of the launch industry, referenced to 2019. All major fuel types currently used are included in the dataset in order to generate an aggregate of the above listed emission species. The dataset is used in simulation of a heavy future launch cadence scenario (2,040 launches/year) based on year 2030 conditions using the SOCOLv4 chemistry-climate model. An overall 0.5% decrease in average global total column ozone is found due to rocket launch emissions. Antarctic (60-90◦S) springtime total column ozone is reduced by 9 DU (-3.8%). Arctic (60-90◦N) springtime ozone is reduced by 11 DU (-2.4%), which is equivalent to half of the springtime ozone loss seen over this region due to chlorofluorocarbons in the late 20th century. O₃ depletion is largely chlorine based, as alumina and black carbon particulates are not quantified in this simulation. Rocket launch emission effects of this scale imply additionally delayed recovery of the ozone layer by up to a decade. Selected current environmental regulation and space policy are also summarized; they largely omit stratospheric effects of rocket activity. These findings reiterate the need for international cooperation and contextualization of emissions systems in which individual actors have comparatively widespread impact.