In a collaborative initiative aimed at mitigating the environmental impact of aviation, Google Research has teamed up with American Airlines and Breakthrough Energy to harness the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) in designing flight paths that minimize the generation of contrails—cloud-like formations caused by aerosols trailing behind aircraft.
Contrails, which contribute to around 35% of aviation’s total global warming effect, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2022, have a substantial climate impact that surpasses even the influence of jet fuel emissions.
Normally forming when airplanes fly through humid air, contrails can persist in the atmosphere for minutes or even hours after a flight, leading to atmospheric warming. Over a period of six months, American Airlines pilots participated in a series of over 70 flights, testing the predictions generated by Google’s AI against Breakthrough Energy’s open-source contrail models. Their objective was to avoid altitudes conducive to contrail formation.
The initial outcomes of this experimentation, unveiled recently, showcase promising results. According to Google researchers, “After analyzing satellite imagery following these test flights, we determined that the pilots successfully reduced contrails by 54%. This marks the first evidence that commercial flights can effectively evade contrails and subsequently reduce their climate impact.”
