Impact of Rocket Launch and Space Debris Air Pollutant Emissions on Stratospheric Ozone and Global Climate
Name
Earth s Future - 2022 - Ryan - Impact of Rocket Launch and Space Debris Air Pollutant Emissions on Stratospheric Ozone and.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.37 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
fb12b3404c10d417bc24eef9a8878f7d
Author(s)
Ryan, Robert G
Marais, Eloise A
Balhatchet, Chloe J
Eastham, Sebastian D
Date Issued
June 9, 2022
Journal
Earth's Future
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Citation
Ryan, R. G., Marais, E. A., Balhatchet, C. J., & Eastham, S. D. (2022). Impact of rocket launch and space debris air pollutant emissions on stratospheric ozone and global climate. Earth's Future, 10, e2021EF002612.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Detailed examination of the impact of modern space launches on the Earth's atmosphere is crucial, given booming investment in the space industry and an anticipated space tourism era. We develop air pollutant emissions inventories for rocket launches and re-entry of reusable components and debris in 2019 and for a speculative space tourism scenario based on the recent billionaire space race. This we include in the global GEOS-Chem model coupled to a radiative transfer model to determine the influence on stratospheric ozone (O3) and climate. Due to recent surge in re-entering debris and reusable components, nitrogen oxides from re-entry heating and chlorine from solid fuels contribute equally to all stratospheric O3 depletion by contemporary rockets. Decline in global stratospheric O3 is small (0.01%), but reaches 0.15% in the upper stratosphere (∼5 hPa, 40 km) in spring at 60–90°N after a decade of sustained 5.6% a−1 growth in 2019 launches and re-entries. This increases to 0.24% with a decade of emissions from space tourism rockets, undermining O3 recovery achieved with the Montreal Protocol. Rocket emissions of black carbon (BC) produce substantial global mean radiative forcing of 8 mW m−2 after just 3 years of routine space tourism launches. This is a much greater contribution to global radiative forcing (6%) than emissions (0.02%) of all other BC sources, as radiative forcing per unit mass emitted is ∼500 times more than surface and aviation sources. The O3 damage and climate effect we estimate should motivate regulation of an industry poised for rapid growth.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021ef002612
