Air traffic affects the environment locally, regionally and globally. Recently, there is increased urgency to understand and mitigate the impact of air traffic on climate. Greenhouse gases, nitrogen oxides, and contrails generated by air traffic affect the climate in different and uncertain ways. Understanding the changes requires a hierarchy of models to deal with multiple disciplines, time scales ranging from few minutes to few hundred years and uncertainties in modeling parameters affecting both science and policy. The models described in this paper are useful to evaluate alternate operational decisions at the national level. The modeling approach is built on the simulation and optimization techniques developed for the design of efficient traffic flow management strategies in the presence of uncertainties. The air traffic flow simulation is augmented by models that simulate aircraft fuel flow, emissions and contrails. The integrated capability enables the evaluation of different traffic flow management concepts based on congestion, capacity, efficiency and emissions. The impact of various decisions on climate can be evaluated by converting CO_2 emissions, non-CO_2 emissions and contrails through the use of radiative forcing functions. Alternatively, the optimization results from the simulation can be used as inputs to global climate modeling tools like the FAA's Aviation Environmental Portfolio Management Tool for Impacts.
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