Abstract
Abstract: There has been a continuously growing trend in international commercial air traffic, with the exception of COVID-19 crises; however, after the recovery, the trend is expected to even sharpen. The consequences of released emissions and by-products in the environment range from human health hazards, low air quality and global warming. This study is aimed to investigate the role of aviation emissions in global warming. For this purpose, data on different variables including global air traffic and growth rate, air traffic in different continents, total global CO2 emissions of different airlines, direct and indirect emissions, air traffic in various UK airports and fuel-efficient aircraft was collected from various sources like EU member states, Statista, Eurostat, IATA, CAA and EUROCONTROL. The results indicated that in 2019, commercial airlines carried over 4.5 × 109 passengers on scheduled flights. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the global number of passengers was reduced to 1.8 × 109, representing around a 60% reduction in air traffic. Germany was the largest contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) from the EU, releasing 927 kt of emissions in 3 years. In the UK, Heathrow airport had the highest number of passengers in 2019 with over 80 million, and the study of monthly aircraft movement revealed that Heathrow Airport also had the highest number of EU and International flights, while Edinburgh had the domestic flights in 2018. These research findings could be beneficial for airlines, policymakers and governments targeting the reduction of aircraft emissions. Graphical abstract:
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 549-564 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Current Pollution Report |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 10 Nov 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Funder
Funding Information: The authors received financial supports from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) UK. The authors also received financial support from the EU project Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL, funded as project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_ 003/0000456, by Czech Republic Operational Programme Research and Development, Education, Priority 1: Strengthening capacity for quality research.Keywords
- Air traffic flow
- Aviation emissions
- Aviation fuels
- Environmental pollution
- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
- Sustainable alternative fuels and COVID-19
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Water Science and Technology
- Waste Management and Disposal
- Pollution
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
