Sensitivity of contrail cirrus radiative forcing to air traffic scheduling
Open accessAbstract
Air traffic effects high cloudiness and therefore the Earth's radiation budget by producing contrail cirrus. Contrail cirrus comprise of line‐shaped contrails and irregularly shaped ice clouds that originate from them. The warming effect of contrail cirrus is disproportionally large at night, since at daytime the cooling due to the short wave cloud albedo effect acts toward compensating the long wave warming effect. Therefore it has been suggested to restrict air traffic to daytime in order to reduce its climate impact. The potential for reducing the contrail cirrus radiative forcing by shifting air traffic to daytime depends on the diurnal cycle of contrail cirrus coverage which is in turn determined by the diurnal cycle of air traffic and the contrail cirrus lifetimes. Simulations with a global atmospheric general circulation model indicate that the annual mean contrail cirrus coverage may be almost constant over the day even in areas where air traffic is close to zero at night. A conceptual model describing the temporal evolution of contrail cirrus coverage reveals that this is due to the large variability in contrail cirrus lifetimes in combination with the spreading of contrail cirrus. This large variability of lifetimes is consistent with observational evidence but more observations are needed to constrain the contrail lifetime distribution. An idealized mitigation experiment, shifting nighttime flights to daytime, indicates that contrail cirrus radiative forcing is not significantly changed.
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The uncertainty in the lifetime of contrail cirrus has only a small impact on the estimated contrail cirrus RF.
“The uncertainty in the lifetime of contrail cirrus, affecting the day-/night-time contrail cover, has only a small impact on the estimated contrail cirrus RF”
From The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018 (2021) · cites this paper as Newinger and Burkhardt, 2012
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Newinger, C., & Burkhardt, U.
- Affiliations
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Burkhardt, Ulrike
- ORCID
- Burkhardt, Ulrike
- Venue
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2012-05-27
- Volume
- 117
- Issue
- D10
- ISSN
- 0148-0227 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1999894009
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 1.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres (publishedVersion)
- elib (German Aerospace Center) (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Advanced Aircraft Design and Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric aerosols and clouds
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
- Keywords
- contrail cirrus, radiative forcing, air traffic scheduling, diurnal cycle, aviation climate impact, cloud albedo
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