Subsonic Aircraft Soot: A Tracer Documenting Stratospheric Vertical Mixing and Barriers to Inter-Hemispheric Exchanges

Pole-to-pole variability of soot aerosol from subsonic aircraft is evidence of two important aspects of stratospheric transport. Vertical transport to 20 km pressure altitude from flight levels near 10-12 km cannot be explained by isentropic mixing. Instead, lofting in the tropics is a possibility. A strong meridional gradient implies that stratospheric soot aerosol residence time is shorter than are mixing times between the hemispheres. Therefore, little if any of exhaust constituents (with residence times similar to that of aircraft soot aerosol), emitted in heavily traveled flight corridors in northern mid-latitudes by a future supersonic fleet, would be transported to the southern hemisphere. However, a significant fraction of NOx could be lofted to altitudes above flight levels where it would dominate ozone depletion.