white clouds above silhouette of clouds at day

Improving Policy Analysis Tools to Evaluate Higher-Altitude Aircraft Operations

Project Number: 058
Category: Combustion Products, Supersonics, Tools

Innovations in aircraft and engine design, which aim to reduce noise, could lead to increased fuel burn, combustion products, and atmospheric effects. This is especially true for supersonic aircraft. Decision-makers, who aim to consider these tradeoffs, subsequently need detailed information on the atmospheric impacts associated with changes in fuel burn and on the inherent uncertainties in the atmospheric impacts. For this purpose, rapid atmospheric assessment tools have been developed. These tools are suitable for use in cost-benefit analyses and have robust consideration of uncertainties. However, the existing tools only cover the impacts of the subsonic aircraft fleet which operates almost exclusively in the troposphere and lowermost stratosphere.

The project team will develop and apply the adjoint of the GEOS-Chem UCX tropospheric-stratospheric chemistry transport model. Analytical estimates of the sensitivity of atmospheric quantities such as the ozone layer will be produced using this tool and incorporated into the FAA’s APMT. This will result in a rapid policy assessment tool which can efficiently estimate the effects of high-altitude aviation, and how those might change in response to modifications such as low-noise technology.

Annual Reports

Program Managers