Global aviation contrail climate effects from 2019 to 2021

Teoh, Roger; Engberg, Zebediah; Schumann, Ulrich; Voigt, Christiane; Shapiro, Marc; Rohs, Susanne; Stettler, Marc E. J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6071-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6071-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6071-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 10

Research article

|

27 May 2024

Research article |

| 27 May 2024

Global aviation contrail climate effects from 2019 to 2021

Roger Teoh, Zebediah Engberg, Ulrich Schumann, Christiane Voigt, Marc Shapiro, Susanne Rohs, and Marc E. J. Stettler

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6071-2024-supplement

Data sets

The high-resolution Global Aviation emissions Inventory based on ADS-B (GAIA) for 2019-2021: High-resolution gridded outputs for 2019 (Full Year) Roger Teoh et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8369829

The high-resolution Global Aviation emissions Inventory based on ADS-B (GAIA) for 2019-2021: High-resolution gridded outputs for 2020-2021 (Bi-monthly) Roger Teoh et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8369925

IAGOS Time series Damien Boulanger et al. https://doi.org/10.25326/06

Model code and software

pycontrails: Python library for modeling aviation climate impacts Marc Shapiro et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7776686

Download

Article (12049 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

The radiative forcing (RF) due to aviation contrails is comparable to that caused by CO₂. We estimate that global contrail net RF in 2019 was 62.1 mW m⁻². This is ~1/2 the previous best estimate for 2018. Contrail RF varies regionally due to differences in conditions required for persistent contrails. COVID-19 reduced contrail RF by 54% in 2020 relative to 2019. Globally, 2 % of all flights account for 80 % of the annual contrail energy forcing, suggesting a opportunity to mitigate contrail RF.