Articles | Volume 22, issue 16
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-10919-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-10919-2022
Research article
 | 
29 Aug 2022
Research article |  | 29 Aug 2022

Aviation contrail climate effects in the North Atlantic from 2016 to 2021

Roger Teoh, Ulrich Schumann, Edward Gryspeerdt, Marc Shapiro, Jarlath Molloy, George Koudis, Christiane Voigt, and Marc E. J. Stettler

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Cited articles

Abrahamson, J. P., Zelina, J., Andac, M. G., and Vander Wal, R. L.: Predictive Model Development for Aviation Black Carbon Mass Emissions from Alternative and Conventional Fuels at Ground and Cruise, Environ. Sci. Technol., 50, 12048–12055, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b03749, 2016. 
Agarwal, A., Meijer, V. R., Eastham, S. D., Speth, R. L., and Barrett, S. R. H.: Reanalysis-driven simulations may overestimate persistent contrail formation by 100–250 %, Environ. Res. Lett., 17, 014045, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/AC38D9, 2022. 
Bickel, M., Ponater, M., Bock, L., Burkhardt, U., and Reineke, S.: Estimating the Effective Radiative Forcing of Contrail Cirrus, J. Climate, 33, 1991–2005, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0467.1, 2019. 
Bock, L. and Burkhardt, U.: Contrail cirrus radiative forcing for future air traffic, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 8163–8174, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-8163-2019, 2019. 
Boies, A. M., Stettler, M. E. J., Swanson, J. J., Johnson, T. J., Olfert, J. S., Johnson, M., Eggersdorfer, M. L., Rindlisbacher, T., Wang, J., and Thomson, K.: Particle emission characteristics of a gas turbine with a double annular combustor, Aerosol Sci. Technol., 49, 842–855, https://doi.org/10.1080/02786826.2015.1078452, 2015. 
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Short summary
Aircraft condensation trails (contrails) contribute to over half of the climate forcing attributable to aviation. This study uses historical air traffic and weather data to simulate contrails in the North Atlantic over 5 years, from 2016 to 2021. We found large intra- and inter-year variability in contrail radiative forcing and observed a 66 % reduction due to COVID-19. Most warming contrails predominantly result from night-time flights in winter.
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