Temporal and spatial variability in the aviation NO[subscript x]-related O[subscript 3] impact
Aviation NO[subscript x] emissions promote tropospheric ozone formation, which is linked to climate warming and adverse health effects. Modeling studies have quantified the relative impact of aviation NO[subscript x] on O[subscript 3] in large geographic regions. As these studies have applied forwar...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
IOP Publishing
2013
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81430 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4988-5754 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9669-2563 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4642-9545 |
| Summary: | Aviation NO[subscript x] emissions promote tropospheric ozone formation, which is linked to climate warming and adverse health effects. Modeling studies have quantified the relative impact of aviation NO[subscript x] on O[subscript 3] in large geographic regions. As these studies have applied forward modeling techniques, it has not been possible to attribute O[subscript 3] formation to individual flights. Here we apply the adjoint of the global chemistry–transport model GEOS-Chem to assess the temporal and spatial variability in O[subscript 3] production due to aviation NO[subscript x] emissions, which is the first application of an adjoint to this problem. We find that total aviation NO[subscript x] emitted in October causes 40% more O[subscript 3] than in April and that Pacific aviation emissions could cause 4–5 times more tropospheric O[subscript 3] per unit NO[subscript x] than European or North American emissions. Using this sensitivity approach, the O[subscript 3] burden attributable to 83 000 unique scheduled civil flights is computed individually. We find that the ten highest total O[subscript 3]-producing flights have origins or destinations in New Zealand or Australia. The top ranked O[subscript 3]-producing flights normalized by fuel burn cause 157 times more normalized O[subscript 3] formation than the bottom ranked ones. These results show significant spatial and temporal heterogeneity in environmental impacts of aviation NO[subscript x] emissions. |
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