Analyse des Einflusses des Luftkehrs auf die natürliche Zirrusbewölkung über Europa, Nordafrika und dem Nordatlantik

Air traffic impacts cirrus cloud cover and consequently the
radiation budget of the earth. Additionally air traffic may change
the optical properties of already existent cirrus clouds and hence
the radiation budget of the atmosphere. For the first time the
impact of air traffic was investigated over Europe, North-Atlantic
and North-Africa for a period of 11 months of 2004 with a high
temporal-resolution satellite sensor. A significant correlation
between cirrus cloud cover and air traffic density was shown for
the region of interest. The air traffic induced cirrus cloud cover
has been estimated with 0.6±0.2% for this region. Global
extrapolation yields 0.17± 0.06%. Based on this value an air
traffic induced radiative forcing of 34 mW/m2 follows. The direct
investigation of the impact of air traffic on outgoing fluxes
yields a warming effect of 1.1 W/m2 for the region of interest.
This value has been calculated from the difference between outgoing
fluxes of air traffic free regions and the whole region. The global
extrapolation yields a warming of 290 mW/m2. However this value is
very uncertain. Additionally further aspects have been
investigated. As a result, a strong dependency of the impact of air
traffic on the geographic location and daytime could be shown.