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Overview of Emissions at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport and Impact of Local Weather on Related Pollutant Concentrations

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Thomas Henry-Lheureux at École de Technologie Supérieure
Thomas Henry-Lheureux
Patrice Seers at École de Technologie Supérieure
Patrice Seers
Weeded Ghedhaïfi at The French Aerospace Lab ONERA
Weeded Ghedhaïfi
François Garnier at École de Technologie Supérieure
François Garnier
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Abstract and Figures

This study used AEDT 2.d to estimate the pollutant emissions at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL) for 2015 while quantifying the impact of the airport’s taxi time and atmospheric conditions on aircraft emissions. Using the more airport-specific parameters available and ICAO standard values otherwise, the yearly emissions of NOx, HC, CO, PM10, SOx, and CO2 at YUL were, respectively, 7.64 102, 1.18 102, 1.33 103, 1.35 101, 6.77 101, and 2.31 105 tonnes/year. The results show that reducing aircraft taxi time by 31 % reduced aircraft emissions by 6 % (NOx) and 27 % (CO). Atmospheric conditions impact aircraft emissions of NOx, CO and HC with a seasonal effect. Summer conditions reduced NOx emissions by 5 % and increased CO emissions by 2 %, while winter conditions reduced HC and CO emissions by approximately 15 % and increased NOx emissions by 1 %. To further investigate the impact of atmospheric conditions, dispersion calculations of NOx and CO emissions were carried out using identical air-traffic and weather data from the warmest and coldest weeks in 2015. The results demonstrate that pollutant concentrations were higher during the winter and that pollutants were also dispersed further during the winter than the summer according to the dominant wind direction. A 1-h NOx and CO concentrations greater than 10 μg/m3 were found up to 24 km and 30 km, respectively, away during the winter compared to 14 km and 20 km during the summer. Yet, local air quality standards were satisfied as pollutant concentrations found outside the airport enclosure were below those standards.
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Overview of Emissions at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott
Trudeau International Airport and Impact of Local
Weather on Related Pollutant Concentrations
Thomas Henry-Lheureux &Patrice Seers &
Weeded Ghedhaïfi &François Garnier
Received: 23 November 2020 /Accepted: 18 March 2021
#The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Abstract This study used AEDT 2.d to estimate the
pollutant emissions at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau
International Airport (YUL) for 2015 while quantifying
the impact of the airport’s taxi time and atmospheric
conditions on aircraft emissions. Using the more airport-
specific parameters available and ICAO standard values
otherwise, the yearly emissions of NOx, HC, CO, PM
10
,
SOx, and CO
2
at YUL were, respectively, 7.64 10
2
,1.18
10
2
,1.3310
3
,1.3510
1
,6.7710
1
, and 2.31 10
5
tonnes/
year. The results show that reducing aircraft taxi time by
31 % reduced aircraft emissions by 6 % (NOx) and 27 %
(CO). Atmospheric conditions impact aircraft emissions
of NOx, CO and HC with a seasonal effect. Summer
conditions reduced NOx emissions by 5 % and in-
creased CO emissions by 2 %, while winter conditions
reduced HC and CO emissions by approximately 15 %
and increased NOx emissions by 1 %. To further inves-
tigate the impact of atmospheric conditions, dispersion
calculations of NOx and CO emissions were carried out
using identical air-traffic and weather data from the
warmest and coldest weeks in 2015. The results dem-
onstrate that pollutant concentrationswere higher during
the winter and that pollutants were also dispersed further
during the winter than the summer according to the
dominant wind direction. A 1-h NOx and CO concen-
trations greater than 10 μg/m
3
were found up to 24 km
and 30 km, respectively, away during the winter com-
pared to 14 km and 20 km during the summer. Yet, local
air quality standards were satisfied as pollutant concen-
trations found outside the airport enclosure were below
those standards.
Keywords Air quality modeling .Airport emissions
inventory .Environment .Air pollution
1Introduction
Formerly estimated to 3.6 % (International Air
Transport Association, 2017), worldwide average annu-
al growth in air passengers has recently been revised to
3.7 %. North America and Europe regions have the
lowest growing rates of 2.2 % whereas the Pacific Asia,
the Middle East, and Africa present the highest rates of
5.0 % for Asia and 4.4 % for theMiddle East and Africa
(International Air Transport Association, 2020). Such
ongoing growth comes with an unavoidable increase in
related gaseous and particulate emissions, not only by
aircraft, but all airport-related activities such as ground
support equipment (GSE) or ground access vehicles
(GAVs). These higher emission rates influence the
air quality in the planetary boundary layer
(International Civil Aviation Organization, 2011)
and climate conditions due to induced radiative
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-021-05087-2
T. Henry-Lheureux (*):P. Seers :F. Garnier
Department of Mechanical Engineering, École de Technologie
Supérieure, 1100 Rue Notre-Dame Ouest, Montréal, Québec H3C
1K3, Canada
e-mail: thomas.henry-lheureux.1@ens.etsmtl.ca
W. Ghedhaïfi
Fundamental and Applied Energetics Department, ONERA - The
French Aerospace Lab, 8 Chemin de la Hunière, 91120 Palaiseau,
France
/ Published online: 19 April 2021
Water Air Soil Pollut (2021) 232: 173
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... To compensate for the shortcomings inherent in flow representation, they usually integrate complex dispersion processes (Tominaga & Stathopoulos, 2013); e.g., atmospheric stratification, buoyancy, chemistry, deposition, and concentration fluctuations. Gaussian models were used in airport environments (Celikel et al., 2004;Henry-Lheureux et al., 2021;Mazaheri et al., 2011;Winther et al., 2015;Yang et al., 2018;Yim et al., 2013) to develop a comprehensive formal assessment of emission inventories (aircraft main engines, APUs, ground-support equipment (GSE), ground-access vehicles (GAVs), private vehicle, stationary sources, etc.), because they are designed to enable different sources of pollutants (Winther et al., 2015) (main engines, APUs, GSE, etc.). For example, a Gaussian model was used to study NO x and CO emissions from Montreal's international airport (YUL) (Henry-Lheureux et al., 2021). ...
... Gaussian models were used in airport environments (Celikel et al., 2004;Henry-Lheureux et al., 2021;Mazaheri et al., 2011;Winther et al., 2015;Yang et al., 2018;Yim et al., 2013) to develop a comprehensive formal assessment of emission inventories (aircraft main engines, APUs, ground-support equipment (GSE), ground-access vehicles (GAVs), private vehicle, stationary sources, etc.), because they are designed to enable different sources of pollutants (Winther et al., 2015) (main engines, APUs, GSE, etc.). For example, a Gaussian model was used to study NO x and CO emissions from Montreal's international airport (YUL) (Henry-Lheureux et al., 2021). The study investigated the impact of both air traffic and GAVs on the whole island of Montreal (56 × 40 km) discretized with a spatial resolution of 110 m. Results under different atmospheric conditions show that pollutants were dispersed further and their concentrations higher during the winter season than in the summer season. ...
... The instantaneous fields allowed for the monitoring of transient emissions during aircraft traffic, which helped to better understand differences observed at different regimes and in different LTO operation zones. Local air quality, however, has been reported on most often in the literature using averaged fields over a specified time interval to estimate chronical effects (Zimmer & Larsen, 1965) (see for example studies Henry-Lheureux et al., 2021;Koulidis et al., 2020;Popescu et al., 2011)). As such, hourly mean concentrations are presented in Fig. 11 under stable atmospheric conditions. ...
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... The nearest station, Gu'an Li Hu Primary School (GLHPS), was most affected by emissions from PKX, where the average concentrations of CO, NO X , and HC were 0.74, 0.72, and 0.08 μg/m 3 , respectively. This is likely because winter weather conditions are not conducive to the spread of pollutants (Henry-Lheureux et al., 2021). The Daxing International Airport area is dominated by northeastern winds in winter, whereas the GLHPS site is downwind of the airport, resulting in higher annual concentrations of pollutants than at several other monitoring sites. ...
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