A Global-Scale Multi-resolution Study of Surface Air Quality Impacts from Commercial Aircraft Emissions

The Model for Ozone and Related chemical Tracers, version 4 (MOZART-4), an offline global-scale chemistry-transport model was applied to assess air quality impacts focusing on ground-level O3 and PM2.5 due to full-flight (during cruise (CRZ) mode, and landing/take-off (LTO) activities) commercial aircraft emissions. MOZART-4 was run at two different horizontal resolutions—the first at 2.4 × 1.9°, which is typical of most global-scale models, and a second at a much finer resolution of 0.67 × 0.5°, and using 56 and 72 vertical layers, respectively, for the year 2005. Overall, emissions during LTO modes cause higher impacts on surface PM2.5 concentrations than CRZ. Full flight impact on surface PM2.5 concentration was ~0.018–0.023 μg/m3 which is in the range of estimates reported by previous studies. However, we saw that CRZ mode had higher contribution on surface O3 than from LTO; totally, aircraft attributed global annual average surface O3 was ~2.0–2.4 ppbv, higher than previously reported values.