A double-box model for aircraft exhaust plumes based on the MADE3 aerosol microphysics (MADE3 v4.0)

Sharma, Monica; Righi, Mattia; Hendricks, Johannes; Schmidt, Anja; Sauer, Daniel; Grewe, Volker

doi:10.5194/gmd-18-8485-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-8485-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy) (ACP/GMD inter-journal...

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-8485-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 21

Model description paper

|

13 Nov 2025

Model description paper |

| 13 Nov 2025

A double-box model for aircraft exhaust plumes based on the MADE3 aerosol microphysics (MADE3 v4.0)

Monica Sharma, Mattia Righi, Johannes Hendricks, Anja Schmidt, Daniel Sauer, and Volker Grewe

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-8485-2025-supplement

Data sets

Data used in "A double-box model for aircraft exhaust plumes based on the MADE3 aerosol microphysics (MADE3 v4.0)" (Sharma et al., 2025) Monica Sharma https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17192582

Model code and software

The Modular Earth Submodel System The MESSy Consortium https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8360186

The Modular Earth Submodel System (2.55.2_2e7bc2c7-made3-plumemodel) The MESSy Consortium https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13134188

Short summary

A plume model is developed to simulate aerosol microphysics in a dispersing aircraft plume, including interactions between ice crystals and aerosols in vortex regime. Compared to an instantaneous dispersion approach, the plume approach estimates 15 % lower aviation aerosol number concentrations, due to more efficient coagulation at plume scale. The model is sensitive to background conditions and initialization parameters, such as ice crystal number concentration and fuel sulfur content.