Climate Impact of a Potential Supersonic Fleet

Kurzfassung

Within the EU-project SCENIC the impact of a potential supersonic fleet has been investigated. The methodology how to estimate its climate impact is presented. A number of sensitivity studies are analysed to identify options to minimise climate impact. Since stratospheric water vapour emissions are the most important contributor to climate change induced by supersonics those scenarios are minimising the climate impact which have the lowest cruise altitude. In order to include climate aspects in multi-disciplinary optimisation for supersonics an assessment tool (AirClim) has been developed within the EU Integrated Project HISAC, which is briefly presented. The main atmospheric input data describe the atmosphere’s sensitivity to the emission region. Based hereon a functional relationship has been developed between basic (supersonic) aircraft design parameters (cruise altitude, fuel consumption) and climate change.