Climate change impact of air traffic

Kurzfassung

The contribution of aviation to global warming represents one of the main challenges of aviation for long-term globally growing air traffic. The radiative forcing of climate by aviation has been reassessed in recent studies. There is a clear need to reduce the fuel consumption per transported passenger or freight mass. However, the largest climate change impact of air traffic may result from contrail cirrus and possibly soot induced cirrus clouds. Mitigation of contrail effects requires new air traffic management concepts which reduce the number of flights in very humid and cold regions of the atmosphere, in particular during night. Further research is required to reduce the large number of open questions related to this issue.