The Effects of Aircraft Wake Dynamics on Contrail Development

Abstract

Results of large-eddy simulations of the development of young persistent ice contrails are presented, concentrating on the interactions between the aircraft wake dynamics and the ice cloud evolution over ages from a few seconds to ?30 min. The 3D unsteady evolution of the dispersing engine exhausts, trailing vortex pair interaction and breakup, and subsequent Brunt?Väisälä oscillations of the older wake plume are modeled in detail in high-resolution simulations, coupled with a bulk microphysics model for the contrail ice development. The simulations confirm that the early wake dynamics can have a strong influence on the properties of persistent contrails even at late times. The vortex dynamics are the primary determinant of the vertical extent of the contrail (until precipitation becomes significant); and this together with the local wind shear largely determines the horizontal extent. The ice density, ice crystal number density, and a conserved exhaust tracer all develop and disperse in different fashions from each other. The total ice crystal number can be significantly reduced due to adiabatic compression resulting from the downward motion of the vortex system, even for ambient conditions that are substantially supersaturated with respect to ice. The fraction of the initial ice crystals surviving, their spatial distribution, and the ice mass distribution are all sensitive to the aircraft type, ambient humidity, assumed initial ice crystal number, and ambient turbulence conditions. There is a significant range of conditions for which a smaller transport such as a B737 produces as significant a persistent contrail as a larger transport such as a B747, even though the latter consumes almost five times as much fuel. The difficulties involved in trying to minimize persistent contrail production are discussed.