Off-setting climate change through formation flying of aircraft, a feasibility study reliant on high fidelity gas-phase chemical kinetic data

Application of formation flights to civil aviation is gaining interest, primarily due to the fuel burn reduction achieved by flying through another aircraft's wake. However, it is emerging that there are additional, less-recognized climate benefits via reduction in ozone and contrail warming through this concept. The NOx threshold level is defined as when the loss rate for OH by reaction with NO2 is equal to the loss rates for OH with CO and CH4, beyond which level, ozone formation will decrease. In this study, The NOx threshold level was calculated at different altitudes and found that at cruise altitude (similar to 10 km), the amount of NO2 required for parity in OH loss with loss due to reaction with CO and CH4 is around 2 ppb. The spatial and temporal NOx threshold levels were estimated by STOCHEM-Common Representative Intermediate (CRI) global chemical transport model and In-service Aircraft for Global Observing System (IAGOS) measurement data and found that northern midlatitudes of the atmosphere are the most favorable region existing with the smallest NOx thresholds (0.5 ppb) needed before reduction in ozone formation is likely to occur at cruise altitude of aircraft. Incorporating the major air traffic corridors into the coarse spatial resolution of the chemical transport model overestimated the NOx compensation point, that is, increased photochemical ozone production. Thus, a simple one-dimensional (1D) aircraft plume dispersion model was developed with higher spatial and temporal resolution for considering aircraft plumes and its chemistry more accurately. The model run shows that the impact of formation flying aircraft emissions on spatially averaged ozone could be halved if the aircraft could maintain separations inside 4 km relative to well separated flights of 10 km or more.

Automated summary

The application of formation flights in civil aviation is gaining interest due to the fuel burn reduction achieved by flying through another aircraft's wake. It is also found that formation flying can reduce ozone and contrail warming, which are less recognized climate benefits. Different altitude calculations show that at cruise altitude, the amount of NO2 needed for parity in OH loss with loss due to reaction with CO and CH4 is around 2 ppb. The NOx thresholds in northern midlatitudes are the smallest (0.5 ppb) before ozone formation reduction is likely to occur at aircraft's cruise altitude.