To predict the environmental impacts of commercial aviation, intensive studies have been launched to measure the properties and effects of aircraft emissions. These observations have revealed an extremely wide variance with respect to the number and sizes of the particles produced in the exhaust plumes. An analytic parameterization is presented that explains most of the observational variance. It is shown that the observed scatter in emission indices of volatile particles is due mainly to variations of plume age, the detection threshold size of the particle counters, and condensable organic emissions. The principle trend of the volatile particle concentrations with fuel sulfur content can be explained with conversion fractions of sulfur into particulate sulfuric acid at emission within the range 0.5 to 5%. A novel assessment of the perturbation of the stratospheric aerosol layer by a future supersonic aircraft fleet confirms previous estimates and puts these simulations on a sounder physical basis. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union