Volker Grewe and Andrea Stenke of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of DLR published "AirClim: an efficient tool for climate evaluation of aircraft technology" (Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 8, pages 4621-4639, 2008). AirClim is a methodology to assess the climate impact of aircraft emissions for a variety of aviation scenarios over short and long time horizons.
AirClim computes the global near surface temperature change induced by carbon dioxide (CO₂), water vapor, nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and line-shaped contrails from subsonic and supersonic aircraft. AirClim is designed to take the amount and location of the emissions into account and uncertainty ranges are considered for lifetimes, radiative forcing calculations and efficacies. AirClim comprises a linearization of atmospheric processes from the emission to radiative forcing, and near surface temperature change. As a result, AirClim is a simple and numerically efficient software tool. AirClim has been applied to a range of applications with various technology options with subsonic and supersonic aircraft for the next century.
Fig. 10 of the paper shows the impact of subsonic aviation for the years 2000, 2100, and 2250 applying the metrics radiative forcing and near surface temperature change. Further metrics may be added. Until 2100, the climate impact by CO₂ and NOₓ-emissions from aviation are of similar magnitude in terms of near surface temperature changes.
