Modeled Full-Flight Aircraft Emissions Impacts on Air Quality and Their Sensitivity to Grid Resolution.

Area of Science:

• Atmospheric Chemistry
• Climate Science
• Environmental Science

Background:

• Aircraft emissions are a significant source of atmospheric pollutants, particularly in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
• The precise impact of these emissions on tropospheric and surface air quality remains incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To predict the effects of aircraft emissions on tropospheric and surface air quality using chemical transport models.
• To quantify the importance of including full-flight intercontinental emissions and higher horizontal grid resolution in these models.

Main Methods:

• Utilized chemical transport models with prescribed meteorology to simulate aircraft emission impacts.
• Quantified aviation-attributable mass flux and perturbations along isentropic surfaces.
• Compared coarse (108 × 108 km²) and fine (36 × 36 km²) grid resolutions in North America.

Main Results:

• Full-flight Northern Hemisphere aviation emissions contributed approximately 1.3% to surface ozone and 0.2% to PM2.5.
• Europe showed slightly higher impacts than North America and East Asia.
• Coarse resolution simulations underestimated aviation impacts on ozone and PM2.5 by approximately 70 and 13 times, respectively, due to an inability to capture near-airport chemical nonlinearities.

Conclusions:

• Accurate assessment of aircraft emission impacts requires high model resolution, especially near major aviation hubs.
• Future global studies must consider model resolution to reliably quantify aircraft contributions to air quality.