A number-based inventory of size-resolved black carbon particle emissions by global civil aviation

Abstract

With the rapidly growing global air traffic, the impacts of the black carbon (BC) in the aviation exhaust on climate, environment and public health are likely rising. The particle number and size distribution are crucial metrics for toxicological analysis and aerosol-cloud interactions. Here, a size-resolved BC particle number emission inventory was developed for the global civil aviation. The BC particle number emission is approximately (10.9 ± 2.1) × 1025 per year with an average emission index of (6.06 ± 1.18) × 1014 per kg of burned fuel, which is about 1.3% of the total ground anthropogenic emissions, and 3.6% of the road transport emission. The global aviation emitted BC particles follow a lognormal distribution with a geometric mean diameter (GMD) of 31.99 ± 0.8 nm and a geometric standard deviation (GSD) of 1.85 ± 0.016. The variabilities of GMDs and GSDs for all flights are about 4.8 and 0.08 nm, respectively. The inventory provides new data for assessing the aviation impacts.

Size-resolved Black Carbon (BC) particle number emission inventory is not available for global civil aviation. Here the authors converted BC mass emission inventory into number emission inventory and found that aviation BC number emission contributes to 1.3% of total ground anthropogenic emissions and 3.6% on global average.

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• http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08491-9 under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by

• http://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000322734 under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

• http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC6358618

• http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/322734

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08491-9.pdf under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

• http://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41467-019-08491-9,

https://doaj.org/toc/2041-1723 under the license cc-by

• http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08491-9.pdf,

http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08491-9,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08491-9

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08491-9.pdf,

https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/322734,

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019NatCo..10..534Z/abstract,

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08491-9/tables,

https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2913868765 under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

DOIS: 10.3929/ethz-b-000322734 10.1038/s41467-019-08491-9