Assessment of a global contrail modeling method and operational strategies for contrail mitigation

Recent updates to the IPCC estimates of radiative forcing contributions from aircraft have raised concerns about the impacts of contrails and aviation-induced cirrus on climate. Increasing demand for aviation will further increase contrail formation. This thesis provides a model to assess operational options for reducing contrail coverage. This model couples realistic flight performance and best-available global meteorological data assimilations. Comparisons were made between satellite-identified contrails and contrail persistence estimates from flight data for 53,844 U.S. continental flights performed during the week of November 11/12-18, 2001. The satellite data were processed by NASA Langley Research Center using methods for identifying contrails as described by Mannstein [28]. Given detailed knowledge of the aircraft types and radar-based trajectory data, simulated contrails did not match contrails observed in the satellite images. First, striated cirrus cloud formations were misidentified as contrail pixels. This resulted in the "contrails" typically aligning N-S, while most aircraft routes are aligned E-W. Perhaps 40-50% of the contrail pixels were misidentified. Second, a total of 60-90% of the contrail pixels (all demonstrated to be either contrails or clouds) occurred in areas where the assimilated meteorological fields showed RHi < 100%. This demonstrates that the RHi fields, although representative, do not accurately portray the true RHi fields on a given day in 2001. Finally, the typical length of the estimated contrails (several degrees) was longer than the typical length of the observed contrails (one degree).

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Klima, Kelly

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ian Waitz.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/32460

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/32460