Development of a rapid global aircraft emissions estimation tool with uncertainty quantification

Abstract

Aircraft emissions impact the environment by changing the radiative balance of the atmosphere and impact human health by adversely affecting air quality. Many tools used to quantify aircraft emissions are not open source and in most cases are computationally expensive. This limits their usefulness for studies that require rapid simulation, such as uncertainty quantification and assessment of many policy options. We describe the methods used to develop the open source Aviation Emissions Inventory Code (AEIC) and produce a global emissions inventory for the year 2005 from scheduled civil aviation, with quantified uncertainty. This is the most up-to-date openly available inventory for use in atmospheric modeling studies. We estimate that in 2005, scheduled civil aviation was responsible for 180.6 Tg (90% CI: 136.1-232.9 Tg) of fuel burn, equating to 155.5 Tg of CO2 as C (90% CI: 117.3-200.7 Tg) and 0.108 Tg of SOx as S (90% CI: 0.080-0.142 Tg) emissions. 2.689 Tg of NOx as NO2 (90% CI: 1.761-3.804 Tg), 0.749 Tg of CO (90% CI: 0.422-1.145 Tg), and 0.201 Tg of HC as CH4 (90% CI: 0.072-0.362 Tg) were also emitted. 92% of fuel burn took place in the northern hemisphere. Landing and takeoff operations were responsible for 9.1% of total global fuel burn, while 70.6% of fuel burn occurred above 8 km. Our total fuel burn estimate agrees within 4% of other published emissions inventories for the years 2004 and 2006, which is within the uncertainty range of the analysis.