Project description
Making planes’ white trails less harmful to the environment
Contrails, those fluffy white streaks left behind by aeroplanes flying overhead, do a lot of damage to the skies. In fact, they contribute to most of the climate impact from aviation. The EU-funded BeCoM project aims to better understand how contrails affect the climate. This will help to mitigate the climate impact of non-CO2 aviation emissions. The project will predict the precise location and time of contrail formation. Observations and measurements, as well as modelling and predictions through advanced numerical methods and AI, are some of the multi-level approaches to dealing with contrails. Recommendations for strategies to tackle the climate impact caused by aviation will also be drawn up.
Objective
Aviation contributes to about 5% of the total anthropogenic climate change when including non-CO2 effects, e.g. contrail formation and the impact of NOx emissions on ozone and methane. Among various non-CO2 effects, the contrail-cirrus radiative forcing is the largest (~2/3) with large uncertainties. The most critical affecting factor is the huge weather-induced variability of the radiative impact of individual contrails. This is the quantity, BeCoM will predict better since the knowledge of the individual radiative forcing is the basis for avoidance of just those contrails that contribute most to the overall climate impact. Once this is standard, it will be possible to formulate adequate mitigation measures and develop policy-driven implementation schemes.
BeCoM will address the uncertainties related to the forecasting of persistent contrails and their weather-dependent individual radiative effects. BeCoM focuses on: 1) obtaining a larger and higher resolution database of relative humidity and ice supersaturation at cruise levels for assimilation into numerical weather prediction (NWP) models; 2) providing more adequate representation of ice clouds in their supersaturated environment in the NWP models; and 3) validation of the predictions to determine and reduce the remaining uncertainties of contrail forecasts. To facilitate the assimilation and validation process, BeCoM will develop a novel hybrid artificial intelligence algorithm. Based on the contrail prediction, BeCoM will develop a policy framework for effective contrail avoidance through a trajectory optimization approach. BeCoM will enable a better understanding of contrail’s climate impact and formulate recommendations on how to implement strategies to enable air traffic management to reduce aviation's climate impact. The BeCoM consortium builds on its knowledge and expertise covering a wide spectrum from atmospheric science and climate research to aviation operations research and policy development.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesmeteorology
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryaliphatic compounds
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- social sciencessocial geographytransporttransport planningair traffic management
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
2628 CN Delft
Netherlands