New research: contrail management is a very inexpensive climate solution
Plus meet us at SF Climate Week and Sustainable Skies Summit this spring
Contrail time-lapse from Doc Searls shows how a lingering contrail evolves over time and spreads out to become a thin cirrus cloud (source).
Let’s cut to the chase: Contrail management at scale will require minimal additional cost (0.08%) and fuel (0.11%) investments to avoid 73% of the climate warming they create.
This is the conclusion of a new study from Alejandra Martin Frias from Austrian flight planner Flightkeys, written with the support of key contrail scientists from Imperial College London, Breakthrough Energy, and more.
The study was performed by simulating contrail avoidance on almost 85,000 American Airlines flights in near real-time for four weeks in 2023/24.
As regular readers will know, contrail management involves analyzing flight trajectories and spotting the few planned flights that will pass through areas of very cold and humid air, where contrails can linger and spread out to become climate-warming cirrus clouds. However, the vast majority of these contrail flights can be slightly adjusted to avoid the pockets of cold and humid air, thereby avoiding this unnecessary warming.
This study underscores that contrail management is very inexpensive and that we should be working to implement this solution with airlines now.
More funding available for contrail research and trials
Ambitious roadmap graphic from UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute (source).
It is clear that aviation non-CO2 - and especially contrails - is getting a lot more attention from lawmakers these days. First, the EU included aviation non-CO2 in its call for new projects and specifically mentioned contrails. Successful applicants - including airlines - can cover 60% of their costs by the EU Innovation Fund while implementing contrail management in their airline operational systems.
Last week, the UK released a technology roadmap for aviation non-CO2, pointing out the research needed in the next few years to implement solutions that can drastically reduce the non-CO2 impact from aviation (including contrails). A big bag of money is following the roadmap, which is geared more towards research rather than trials.
Now, we are just waiting to see what the US will come up with.
Huge knowledge gap behind Tennessee lawmaker’s ban on “chemtrails”
If anyone is searching for proof that the science of contrails and their climate impact is a well-kept secret compared to the conspiracy theory of chemtrails, look no further. Within the last few months, there have been serious chemtrail discussions in the Kuwaiti parliament and in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and this week, Tennessee passed a bill banning chemtrails from the state’s airspace (Will the state sue airlines producing contrails? Will airlines have to avoide Tennessee and surrounding airspace if there are pockets of cold and humid air above the state?)
It seems like the knowledge gap is deepening with all this recent commotion from misinformed politicians and their supporters. Above is a screenshot of a search on Google Trends from today, April 3, 2024, logging the interest in the search terms “chemtrails” versus “contrails” worldwide over the past 12 months. It shows that the “chemtrails” search term is at a 12-month peak right now.
The aviation community must do much more to inform the general public about condensation trails and the climate.
Meet us at San Francisco Climate Week and Sustainable Skies World Summit
In an attempt to educate and inform about contrails and the climate, Blue Lines will host a contrail event as a part of San Francisco’s Climate Week on Friday, April 26, 2024. Come and hear about the promising solution of Contrail Management and meet fellow contrail enthusiasts Dan Rutherford, Senior Director of Research at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), and Matteo Mirolo, Head of Policy and Strategy, Contrails at Breakthrough Energy. It’s a happy hour taking place at SF Scandinavian bakery cafe, Kantine. In-person only. Get your free tickets here.
In May, I will head to the UK to moderate a panel discussion at the Sustainable Skies World Summit on Day 2 (May 16) titled “Flight emissions and climate change: it’s not only about CO2.” The session will kick off with a keynote from MIT’s Florian Allroggen (MIT is doing a lot of contrail research and working on trials with Delta Airlines), and panelists include Flightkeys’ Raimund Zopp (Flightkeys is a flight planning software provider and the first to integrate contrail avoidance in their tools), and Google’s Head of Travel Sustainability & Transport, Global Partnerships, Sebnem Erzan. More people will join the panel. This will be the third time moderating a contrail discussion at an aviation conference. I am really looking forward to this session.
(As regular readers of the Blue Lines newsletter will know, contrails are the wispy white stripes that airplanes sometimes leave behind in the sky (made from water vapor and engine soot). Some of these condensation trails can spread out and become high-altitude ice clouds (cirrus), which reflect some of the sun’s energy back into space but also trap outgoing energy in the atmosphere, resulting in a net heating of our planet equivalent to 1-2% of human-induced global warming. However, we can relatively easily avoid most warming contrails by flying around the contrail-prone areas in the atmosphere. This climate solution – often called contrails mitigation or contrail management – is what Blue Lines promotes and wants to see spread worldwide.)
See you soon.
Joachim Majholm,
Blue Lines