Air Traffic and Emission Inventories of the Second Generation—Global and Regional Inventory Calculation with FATE

Higher requirements of science and politics forced an additional temporal and better local allocation of air traffic and their emissions. Within the last years a program (FATE: Four-dimensional calculation of Aircraft Trajectories and Emissions) has been developed in the DLR Institute of Transport Research, which is able to produce air traffic movements and emissions inventories with a four-dimensional resolution. The values for the flown distance, the fuel used up and the time needed, as well as the emitted gasses and particulate matters (e.g. NO_X, CO, UHC, SO₂, SOOT, etc.) are indicated for each time coded air cell. The three-dimensional position calculation is the standard mode of this program. The possibility of time coding and emission allocation can be used—each separately or in conjunction—as an additional feature. This new calculation method replaces the simple great circle calculation (a great circle is the shortest way from point A to B on a spherical surface) of the first generation of air traffic inventories by flight trajectory calculation on waypoint basis using equations of spherical trigonometry. The development of the DLR-program started in 1995 and first results were published in 1996.