A number-based inventory of size-resolved black carbon particle emissions by global civil aviation.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30710090.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-08491-9 and PMC identifier 6358618.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
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) × 10<sup>25</sup> per year with an average emission index of (6.06 ± 1.18) × 10<sup>14</sup> 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.