Contrail Altitude Estimation Based on Shadows Detected in Landsat Imagery

Contrails contribute to global warming by trapping outgoing terrestrial radiation, exerting an immediate warming influence on the climate. The climatic impact of contrails is potentially comparable to that of aviation’s carbon emissions. This underlines the importance of minimizing contrail formation to mitigate the climate effects of aviation,...

Contrail minimization through altitude diversions: A feasibility study leveraging global data

As global flight volume rises, the aviation industry is facing increasing climate challenges. One major factor is the impact of contrails, which trap outgoing terrestrial radiation and counteract emission reduction benefits from emission-optimized flight routes. Our study quantifies contrail-forming flights globally and assesses altitude...

Assessing and Modelling Climate Optimal Flights Using Open Surveillance and Remote Sensing Data

Sustainability is the biggest challenge facing the aerospace industry today. With the global number of flights expected to rise, the climate impact of aviation will continue to increase. Current research states that the rerouting of aircraft through wind-optimisation for the purpose of fuel usage minimisation and emission reduction is an...

Examining Contrail Formation Models with Open Flight and Remote Sensing Data

One of the biggest challenges facing the aerospace industry today is its sustainability. As the number of flights is expected to rise globally, aviation’s climate impact will continue to increase. Current research has extensively addressed the rerouting of aircraft through wind-optimization in order to minimize fuel burn and emissions. Such...

Feasibility of climate-optimized air traffic routing for trans-Atlantic flights

Current air traffic routing is motivated by minimizing economic costs, such as fuel use. In addition to the climate impact of CO2 emissions from this fuel use, aviation contributes to climate change through non-CO2 impacts, such as changes in atmospheric ozone and methane concentrations and formation of contrail-cirrus. These non-CO2 impacts...

ATM4E: A concept for environmentally-optimized aircraft trajectories

Trajectory optimisation is one option to reduce air traffic impact on environment. A multidimensional environmental assessment framework is needed to optimize impact on climate, local air quality and noise simultaneously. An interface between flight planning and environmental impact information can be established with environmental cost...

Climate impact evaluation of future green aircraft technologies

Air traffic is an important part of our mobility with an increasing rate in transport volume of around 5% per year. Air traffic also contributes to anthropogenic warming by around 5%. Here we present a climate impact assessment tool AirClim and give an overview on the recent technology assessments. Finally, we present a best practice for a...