Course Instructor: Prof. F. Berlin
Mentors: Prof. Lance Sherry
Fethi Erimcag, Gayathri Movva, Lydia Cooley, Shaozun Chen, Timur Berdinekov, Ting Wang

Introduction

  • Contrails that remain long after aircraft operation have a high radioactive forcing (RF) potential, and fall into two categories: persistent contrails and contrail cirrus, with the former having the biggest negative impact on climate change.

  • Ice supersaturated regions are regions with low temperature (below 233.15K) and high relative humidity (ice saturation exceeds 100%(RHi)). Cirrus clouds and contrails can form in this region.

  • In terms of cost and time, adjusting aircraft cruise levels to avoid Ice Supersaturated Regions (ISSRs) is the best option with the highest utility and lowest costs.

  • ISSR Dashboard consists of using R to visually plot 20km² cells containing historical ice supersaturated conditions along longitude, latitude, and elevation in increments of ft1,000, ranging from ft20,000 to ft40,000 over the continental United States. This will allow end-users such as flight planners as well as researchers to both review the extent of ISSRs as well as plan out flight paths to avoid likely ISSRs, contributing to reduced impact on radioactive forcing through decreased rates of aircraft induced clouds.

  • This Dashboard use historical data of ISSRs ranges from 2020-03-01 to 2021-03-18 to make statistical analysis and visualizations.

  1. Volume of ISSR
  2. Volume change rate
  3. ISSR ceilings and floors
  4. Distribution on flight levels
  5. 3D coverage
  6. Hourly movement at different FL

Volume of ISSR

  • This is the number of ISSR cells
  • ISSR volume changed every hour.
  • ISSR volume became smaller from July to September 2020, became larger in November and December. It reached peak during March 2020.

Hourly

  • This is the number of ISSR cells in every hour

Hourly-Data overview

Daily

  • This is the average number of ISSR cells in every day

Daily-Data overview

Monthly

  • This is the average number of ISSR cells in every month

Monthly-Data

Volume Change Rates

  • This is the percent change rate of number of ISSR cells, it’s calculated by volume in current timestamp/volume in previous timestamp.
  • In hourly view, the change rate ranges from 0 to 3, and there is extreme value in Feb.2021.
  • There are two extreme values for daily change rate, which are associated with Mar 12th 2020 and May 17th 2020.
  • From the monthly view, ISSR volume kept growing during Spring and Fall 2020. It decreased during July, November and January.

Hourly

Hourly-Data overview

Daily

Daily-Data overview

Monthly

Monthly-Data

ISSR Ceilings and Floors

  • The ceilings and floors of ISSR means the highest and the lowest flight level that contains ISSRs.
  • The ceilings for ISSR are around FL350 - FL500, the floors of ISSR are around FL200 - FL250 in most time, up to FL300 during summer.
  • Vertical distribution of ISSR shrank during summer 2020.

Hourly

Hourly-Data overview

Daily

Daily-Data overview

Distribution of Flight Levels

  • This is number of ISSR cells distributed in each flight level, at 0 a.m., 6 a.m., 12 p.m., and 18 p.m., on the first day of each month.
  • The largest number of ISSR cells distributes at FL320 in most months.

0 a.m.

Data overview

6 a.m.

Data overview

12 p.m.

Data

18 p.m.

Data Overview

3D Coverage

  • This is the 3D interactive plot of ISSRs on the first day of each month.
  • During spring 2020, ISSR existed over the west and north area of continental U.S. (California, Washington, Montana, Maine)
  • During summer and fall 2020, ISSR moved up and spread over the whole continental U.S. including Florida.
  • During winter 2020, ISSR shrank back to the west and north area.

Midnight

ISSRs at 00:00 on the first day of each month.

3/1

4/1

5/1

6/1

7/1

8/1

9/1

10/1

11/1

12/1

1/1

2/1

3/1

Noon

ISSRs at 12:00 on the first day of each month.

3/1

4/1

5/1

6/1

7/1

8/1

9/1

10/1

11/1

12/1

1/1

2/1

3/1

Hourly Movement

FL230

FL260

FL290

FL310

FL330

FL350

FL370

FL390

FL400

Appendix

Data Set

Data Source: Rapid Refresh (RAP) hourly assimilation and modeling system at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) website with 20km resolution scale.
Data Set and Size:
1.Daily data csv files only contains ISSR cells with geometric information (Approx. 20~40MB each, 382 files in total)
2.ISSR volume summary data files contains number of cells for each level in every hour (8.3MB)
Time Range: March 1st 2020 - March 18th 2021
Raw Data Access: Rapid Refresh (RAP) HTTPS
Raw Data Format: Grib2

Daily data set sample overview

Volume summary data set overview