Airlines acknowledge the damaging impact of contrails and want it eliminated

Airlines and scientists are finally reaching a consensus on the role of these traces, and companies are already acknowledging that they can play an important role in global warming. For that reason Such tracks form clouds that trap heat in the atmosphere at the altitude at which airplanes fly.

In fact, trail clouds may be a more important factor in global warming than carbon dioxide or other fuel emissions, according to a European Union study that analyzed more than a decade of commercial flights. This is part of a new field in climate science called ‘effective radiative forcing’, which measures the overall warming effect rather than the previous standard focused on CO2 emissions.

Now, North American airlines, including Fort Worth-based American and Dallas-based Southwest, They are trying to find out which of these contras is the most harmful to the environment and what can be done about it.if something can be done.

“Air travel has almost twice the impact on global warming than we previously thought,” says Andrew Chen, an aviation expert at the climate NGO Rocky Mountain Institute.

Airlines, including American and Southwest, are partnering with other airlines and the Rocky Mountain Institute to address the issue. Aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus and Google Research have joined the group, along with other major airlines such as United, Alaska and Virgin Atlantic. This all came after Atlanta-based Delta Airlines announced in October that it had entered into an agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to control at least the busiest contracts. dropped by planes.

The airline industry has set ambitious environmental targets in recent years, although it acknowledges that much of the technology needed to achieve these goals is not yet available. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines set the year 2050 to completely eliminate their emissions footprints.. To date, most of the emission reductions airlines have been able to achieve have been through the use of more fuel-efficient engines, while waiting for a sustainable fuel to emerge using recycled oils and researching hydrogen and electric motors.

Its effects are increasingly known

And the contra trails represent a new challenge outside of the traditional strategy for carbon emissions.

“The science about controls has gotten clearer in recent years,” said Jill Blickstein, American Airlines’ vice president of sustainability. “For example, we’ve known for some time that some internal scars that form in the morning can have a cooling effect, and scars that form at night are more likely to heat up. We didn’t have a clear idea of ​​the net effect of all the contras. We have seen this warming effect more clearly recently.‘, he explained.

According to Delta, about 65% of aircraft flying at cruising altitudes between 30,000 and 45,000 feet form counterlines, but most of these dissipate within minutes and have little warming effect. Again, about 10% of these are “permanent” scar formations that stay for hours.

The worst contras occur at night, Chen said that when the earth naturally cools without sunlight, only man-made clouds at this critical height can prevent heat from escaping.

“A small percentage of flights are made at night, but they are the ones that make up the majority of contras. And this is the worst time for that to happen,” Chen added.

Even daytime trails are bad, although clouds block sunlight from reaching the surface.

Airlines know how to eliminate contrails

Helen Giles, director of environmental sustainability at Southwest Airlines, said pilots and airlines know how to avoid counterrailing, but this requires many factors to be considered when planning a flight, including weather, current turbulence and speed. So, depending on the circumstances, avoiding contrails forces us to burn much more fuel than under normal conditions.

Predicting conditions under which a trail will form within 6 or 8 miles is as accurate as forecasting ground-level weather. So even if it’s a good guess, it can’t be perfect, taking into account that planes fly at high speed. So one of the relics is to develop the ability to predict how and where this phenomenon will occur.

The plan is to use satellite imagery and aircraft sensors to determine when planes start producing contrails and how long they stay in the air. They can then understand the conditions where the most contraptions occur, and then combine that data with data on weather, turbulence, speed, and other factors.

“From an operational perspective, we believe We know what we can do to reduce the impact, but we want to see the model before we create a concrete plan.“It’s really hard to weigh the effect of radiative forcing versus the carbon dioxide from burning fuel,” Giles noted.

Hopefully, minor changes in flight and route planning can completely prevent the aircraft from forming a contrailespecially in conditions where they are more intense and artificially developed.

Giles said Southwest, for example, has put together a team that includes environmental experts as well as pilots and network planners to study this issue. Eventually, they hope to bring in the Federal Aviation Administration and other aviation-related regulators.

“With modest changes in flight altitude, we can avoid counter lines”said Blickstein of the American. “But there are many variables to consider, from the robustness of the model that predicts how and at what altitude the track path will form, to the value and simplicity of the information we can provide to flight crews, and current weather and air traffic conditions.” And that’s just the beginning of a long list,” he said. “We’re at the beginning of what I hope will be a long learning process.”

In any case, the race to eradicate the counter lines and their hitherto little-known harmful effects on the climate and atmosphere seems to have already begun.

Reference article: https://phys.org/news/2022-12-airlines-contrails-environmental-problem.html

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