Contrails.org, a project at Breakthrough Energy, advances research on the climate impact of contrails and potential ways to reduce their warming effects.
Contrails form when soot and water vapor from aircraft engines interact with cold, humid air. For roughly 5% of flights, these contrails can trap heat in the atmosphere and are estimated to contribute 1–2% of human-caused global warming. Understanding where these contrails form and how flight paths affect them is an important part of identifying potential mitigation strategies.
To support this research, Contrails.org needed detailed aircraft positional data to analyze flight trajectories and their relationship to contrail formation, and Aireon’s global space-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data provided that.
Through AireonINSIGHTS, Aireon’s event-based data analytics products, Contrails.org can study how different flight trajectories affect contrail formation. The data also supports the evaluation of airline trials that adjust flight paths to avoid areas where contrails are more likely to form.
Combining Aireon’s data with atmospheric and environmental information gives researchers an additional way to evaluate contrail mitigation efforts. The findings can help inform future research and approaches aimed at reducing the climate impact of contrails.
