Articles | Volume 16, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2059-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2059-2016
Research article
 | 
24 Feb 2016
Research article |  | 24 Feb 2016

Properties of young contrails – a parametrisation based on large-eddy simulations

Simon Unterstrasser

Abstract. Contrail–cirrus is probably the largest climate forcing from aviation. The evolution of contrail–cirrus and its radiative impact depends not only on a multitude of atmospheric parameters, but also on the geometric and microphysical properties of the young contrails evolving into contrail–cirrus. The early evolution of contrails (t  <  5 min) is dominated by an interplay of ice microphysics and wake vortex dynamics. Young contrails may undergo a fast vertical expansion due to a descent of the wake vortices and may lose a substantial fraction of their ice crystals due to adiabatic heating. The geometric depth H and total ice crystal number N of young contrails are highly variable and depend on many environmental and aircraft parameters. Both properties, H and N, affect the later properties of the evolving contrail–cirrus, as they control the extent of shear-induced spreading and sedimentation losses. In this study, we provide parametrisations of H and N after 5 min taking into account the effects of temperature, relative humidity, thermal stratification and aircraft type (mass, wing span, fuel burn). The parametrisations rely on a large data set of recent large-eddy simulations of young contrails. They are suited to be incorporated in larger-scale models in order to refine the present-day contrail initialisations by considering the processes that strongly affect the contrail evolution during the vortex phase.

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Short summary
A large comprehensive data set of 3-D large eddy simulation (LES) of young contrails has been analysed. Parametrisations of the most important properties of young contrails, namely the ice crystal number and geometric depth, are provided taking into account the effect of many environmental and aircraft parameters. The parametrisation is suited to be incorporated in larger-scale models like GCMs.
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