The Impact on the Ozone Layer of a Potential Fleet of Civil Hypersonic Aircraft

hubie writes:

Accepted to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Earth's Future, a group of researchers from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boeing, and the University of Illinois looked at the potential effects that a future commercial Hypersonic Transport (HST) fleet would have on the ozone layer. Given the designs under consideration and that these vehicles would fly above the ozone layer, they considered the effects of water vapor and nitrogen compounds on the ozone layer as a function of the altitude they are released.

Plain Language Summary
Commercial hypersonic aircraft, if developed in the future, will be flying at Mach 5 to 8 in the middle to upper stratosphere (30 to 40 km altitude) to carry passengers in a couple of hours from London to New York or from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Depending on the adopted technology and fleet size, the powerful engines of such airplanes may release substantial amounts of water and nitrogen oxides in the stratosphere, which could potentially damage the protecting ozone layer and hence increase the level of biologically damaging ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth surface. The paper uses an advanced global atmospheric model to assess the impact of a potential fleet of hypersonic aircraft.

One of the goals of the paper is that it can be used as a guide for engine design optimization and for planning of future flight paths. From the paper's conclusions:

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