Stratospheric ozone and climate forcing sensitivity to cruise altitudes for fleets of potential supersonic transport aircraft

Emissions from supersonic transports have raised crucial environmental concerns regarding ozone and climate. The atmospheric response is sensitive to a range of factors regarding aircraft types, designs, and deployment parameters.

This study conducts a series of sensitivity experiments of possible future cruise altitudes to evaluate the potential atmospheric response for a fleet of supersonic aircraft assumed to be fully operational in 2050. Cruise emissions in the sensitivity studies were varied in 2 km bands over the 13-23 km altitude range. We show that the supersonic aircraft can induce both ozone increase and decrease depending on altitude primarily as a result of emissions of nitrogen oxides, and the changes in total column ozone depend on the cruise altitude.