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Aviation Impact on Climate Change

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 4676

Special Issue Editors

Institute of Logistics and Aviation, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
Institute of Logistics and Aviation, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
Interests: contrails; ATM; air traffic; trajectory optimization; flight performance
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The impact of air traffic on climate change has stipulated a vast set of vital debates in recent years, both among the general public and the scientific community. Not only greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and soot imped this change, but also secondary effects such as contrails or the influence on ozone formation also have a reliably proven impact on climate change. The effective duration of these processes varies from a few minutes to several hundred years, requiring studies of various levels of detail. With a rapidly increasing accuracy on the estimation of the atmosphere’s state based on continuous atmospheric measurements, science aims at predicting weather and climate trends both on global and local level with high precision. On the technology side, relevant knowledge is meanwhile available to estimate aircraft engine and aerodynamic effects of aircraft when interacting with the atmosphere. Various models were developed to estimate the influence of combustion processes and aircraft flight performance, aerodynamic configuration, and cruise procedures on climate change. A major topic deals with accordingly optimizing aircraft trajectories timely and spatially to minimize anthropogenic effects to claim for a sustainable air transportation system.

In spring 2020, air traffic worldwide shrank down to 5% of its original volume for several weeks. This period has caused a measurable effect on short-term climate-damaging effects of air traffic, which allows for a unique opportunity to validate both existing climate, network and transport models.

This Special Issue brings together reliable analyses and model approaches including but not limited to the Covid-19 lock down impact on the atmosphere and may lead to new research opportunities towards a sustainable air transport system. It seeks papers encompassing all aspects of aviation-meteorology cause-effect models. Contributions on the impact of air traffic on climate change and on the strategic development of a sustainable air transport sector are also welcome.

The aim is to foster further the scientific knowledge on globally sustainable solutions for the air transport system while coping with the IPCC 2° target.

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Fricke
Dr. Judith Rosenow
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Climate Change
  • Air Traffic
  • Atmosphere
  • Atmospheric Soundings
  • Air Traffic Simulation
  • Weather simulation
  • Trajectory Optimization
  • Radiative Forcing
  • Contrails

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 2282 KiB  
Article
Method for Calculating the Required Number of Transport Vehicles Supplying Aviation Fuel to Aircraft during Combat Tasks
by Jarosław Ziółkowski, Józef Żurek, Jerzy Małachowski, Mateusz Oszczypała and Joanna Szkutnik-Rogoż
Sustainability 2022, 14(3), 1619; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14031619 - 30 Jan 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1999
Abstract
During aircraft flights, combat readiness and the supply system affecting it are essential issues. The basic items of supply during the implementation of tasks are combat assets and aviation fuel. Effective management of the flow of required products, as well as the reliability [...] Read more.
During aircraft flights, combat readiness and the supply system affecting it are essential issues. The basic items of supply during the implementation of tasks are combat assets and aviation fuel. Effective management of the flow of required products, as well as the reliability of vehicles and the availability of crews contribute to the quality of task performance. The components that make up this quality in military operations are measured by readiness. In real-life operations, the number of vehicles supplying aircraft with aviation fuel is determined for safety and reliability with an surplus related to the number of flight support facilities. This paper develops a method for determining the minimum number of vehicles required to supply aircraft (sp) with aviation fuels. The developed method was verified by a numerical example illustrating its application in practice. Additionally, a detailed analysis of its application was carried out in relation to potentially 50 possible scenarios of combat task execution, with a number of assumptions fulfilled. Based on the performed calculations, it was concluded that the number of vehicles required for sp fuel supply depends on several factors: the number of aircraft, the characteristics of air tasks (flight length and frequency of departures), as well as the time of clean sp refuelling and the duration of the vehicle-tanker refuelling cycle. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aviation Impact on Climate Change)
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18 pages, 2461 KiB  
Article
Assessment of the Method of Merging Landing Aircraft Streams in the Context of Fuel Consumption in the Airspace
by Anna Kwasiborska and Jacek Skorupski
Sustainability 2021, 13(22), 12859; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212859 - 20 Nov 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1809
Abstract
The most important directions in the field of sustainable development of air transport concern increasing the capacity of airports and improving the global civil aviation system, improving air traffic safety, and developing procedures to optimize the operation of the aviation system. An important [...] Read more.
The most important directions in the field of sustainable development of air transport concern increasing the capacity of airports and improving the global civil aviation system, improving air traffic safety, and developing procedures to optimize the operation of the aviation system. An important area is environmental protection and measures to minimize the negative impact of civil aviation activities on the environment. Air traffic and the operation of airports generate adverse environmental effects, including greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and noise emissions. Due to the high intensity of aircraft maneuvers, the authors analyzed aircraft traffic in the area approaching the airport. It is essential to correctly line up for aircraft reporting from different entry points to the approach area to avoid waiting for landing. Misalignment of landing aircraft negatively impacts airport capacity, increases fuel consumption through more prolonged waiting times in space, and directly impacts air pollution. There are different ways to organize landing aircraft flows and other ways to merge these flows. The article aims to assess the method of combining the streams of landing aircraft and estimate the impact of such an organization on the increased fuel consumption of aircraft and thus on air pollution. The authors proposed a measure for assessing the quality of the landing queue, which was defined as the increase in flight time of aircraft in the approach area in relation to the nominal time, which was adopted as minimization. In order to obtain the results of research works, a model using a Petri net was developed, allowing for flexible mapping of concurrent processes and their effect analysis. Various methods of combining the streams of landing aircraft have been adopted: three-stage, two-stage, and single-stage. Then, simulation experiments were carried out, allowing the determination of whether the method of combining the streams of landing planes has an impact on the quality of the landing queue measured with the proposed index. The obtained results of the assessment can be used to estimate the increased fuel consumption of the aircraft. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aviation Impact on Climate Change)
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