Potential Impacts on Ozone and Climate From a Proposed Fleet of Supersonic Aircraft

Abstract

The first commercial supersonic transport aircraft were first designed and built in the 1970s and consideration of such aircraft largely ceased in the late 1990s (e.g., Kawa et al., 1999;Penner et al., 1999). This perceived market has largely been left dormant since the retirement of the first commercial supersonic aircraft, the Concorde, in 2003. Environmental impacts associated with the operation of supersonic aircraft in the stratosphere have been an object of scientific interest since the 1970s (Grobecker et al., 1974) when the Concorde first entered into service.There is now renewed interest in considering designs for supersonic commercial aircraft, especially for smaller passenger aircraft and for supersonic business jets (e.g., Carisosica et al., 2019). The expectation of aircraft designing, testing, and operating profitable, efficient, safety, and reliable supersonic civil aircraft have been greatly improved owning to the advancement in materials, propulsion, flight control technology, analytical methods, and performance prediction over the last four decades (MacIsaac & Langton, 2011;Nicolai & Carichner, 2010). With the recently renewed interest, various academic institutions and several companies have targeted the consideration of designs for supersonic transport aircraft, including actively developing new such aircraft (e.g., Boom, 2023;Eastham et al., 2022; Spike, 2023). Resulting environmental effects from fleets of these aircraft need to be evaluated.