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Winter weather patterns are characterised by the jet stream
Eastbound Westbound
Irvine et al., 2012, Met. Apps., in press
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W1. strong zonal jet
W2. Strong tilted jet
W4. Confined jet
Composite 250 hPa geopotential height (black) and wind speed > 40 ms-1 (red). Individual time-optimal aircraft routes between London and New York (blue).
Climate impact in different weather patterns: CO2
• Proxy for the CO2 impact of a flight: time to fly the minimum time route, assuming a constant airspeed and altitude
Climate impact in different weather patterns: CO2
• Proxy for the CO2 impact of a flight: time to fly the minimum time route, assuming a constant airspeed and altitude
300 hPa 250 hPa 200 hPa
W1. Zonal jet
W2. Tilted jet
%
W4. Confined jet
Route location
• Location linked to various features: jet stream, Greenland, ridges• Altitude distribution depends on weather pattern
Eastbound Westbound
Irvine et al., 2012 GRL
Occurrence of cold ice-supersaturated regions
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Trajectory Analysis
Lifetime of ice-supersaturated air
Origin of ice-supersaturated air
T+0T-48 h
T+48 h
• Lagrangian trajectory code (Methven, 1997) run on ERA-Interim data
• Trajectories released on a 1x1 degree grid, over North Atlantic from 250 hPa
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Trajectory Analysis
Lifetime of ice-supersaturated air
Origin of ice-supersaturated air
T+0T-48 h
T+48 h
• Lagrangian trajectory code (Methven, 1997) run on ERA-Interim data
• Trajectories released on a 1x1 degree grid, over North Atlantic from 250 hPa
• Total ~ 100,000 trajectories with ice-supersaturation (ISS)
• Of these, ~ 60% start in the troposphere, ~ 40% in stratosphere
Trajectories of air that become ice-supersaturated over the UK
• For trajectories starting in the troposphere with lifetime at least 24 h
• Air that becomes ice-supersaturated over the UK comes from the south-west and moves north-eastwards.
24 h before… 24 h after…
• Air which stays ISS for > 24 h comes from a more southerly direction and has a slower speed than shorter-lived ISS air
• This suggests that a greater proportion of long-lived ISS air is associated with high-pressure ridges rather than the jet stream
Comparison of longer-lived ISS air with shorter-lived ISS air
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W
S
Direction air comes from Speed of air (along trajectory)
Summary
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Using characteristic weather patterns for the north Atlantic winter season, we find that:
•The CO2 and contrail impacts vary by weather pattern
•Eastbound routes benefit from the jet stream and therefore have a (<20%) smaller CO2 impact than westbound flights
•The formation of contrails shows a strong dependence on altitude in a given weather pattern
•Preferred locations for contrail formation are over Greenland, around high-pressure ridges and in regions of uplift near jet streams
•Air which becomes ice-supersaturated over the UK comes from the SW; air which stays ice-supersaturated for at least 24 h may be associated with high-pressure ridges