Climate change is without a doubt changing the world around us. From melting ice caps, rising sea levels, severe weather, to everything in between. The aviation industry has played a large part in climate change for a number of years. There are many ways it has affected climate change, one thing that really caught our eye is the materialization of contrails in the sky.
The stream of man-made clouds you see behind an airplane flying overhead is actually harmful to the climate. These clouds have heat trapping effects and trap heat near Earth’s surface, behaving like a blanket for the greenhouse gases beneath them. They are also made up of pollutants which makes them even more harmful.
Although some induced cirrus clouds can disappear within a few hours, Sometimes these clouds can stay in the sky for days and weeks and also spread, increasing their area of effect. On popular air routes these contrails can really build up and have a long term effect on the climate.
Our primary approach towards contrails is optimizing flight paths to avoid contrail formation zones and plotting contrail “red-zones” by utilizing Schmidt-Appleman criterion and weather data.
Our secondary approach towards contrails is optimizing is stopping contrails at their source, allowing water vapor to condense before its emitted, preventing water vapor from condensing in the air into an induced cirrus cloud.
