Re-routing flights could reduce climate impact, research suggests

EurekAlert via the Institute of Physics: Aircraft can become more environmentally friendly by choosing flight paths that reduce the formation of their distinctive condensation trails, new research suggests.

In a study published today, 19 June 2014, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, researchers from the University of Reading have shown that aircraft contribute less to global warming by avoiding the places where the thinly shaped clouds, called contrails, are produced – even if that means flying further and emitting more carbon dioxide.

Contrails only form in regions of the sky where the air is very cold and moist, which is often in the ascending air around high pressure systems. They can sometimes stay in the air for many hours, eventually spreading out to resemble natural, wispy clouds.

The findings suggest that policymakers need to consider more than carbon emissions in discussions about how to make aviation less environmentally damaging. Recent research has shown that the amount of global warming caused by contrails could be as large, or even larger, that the contribution from aviation CO2 emissions.

The work was carried out by Dr Emma Irvine, Professor Keith Shine, and Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, at the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. Dr Irvine said: "If we can predict the regions where contrails will form, it may be possible to mitigate their effect by routing aircraft to avoid them. Our work shows that for a rounded assessment of the environmental impact of aviation, more needs to be considered than just the carbon emissions of aircraft."...

An Airbus in flight, shot by greg Yablin, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 licemse