Original paper
Can we successfully avoid persistent contrails by small altitude adjustments of flights in the real world?
Sausen, Robert; Hofer, Sina; Gierens, Klaus; Bugliaro, Luca; Ehrmanntraut, Rüdiger; Sitova, Ilona; Walczak, Kacper; Burridge-Diesing, Anja; Bowman, Milena; Miller, Nick
Meteorologische Zeitschrift Vol. 33 No. 1 (2024), p. 83 - 98
77 references
published: Jun 5, 2024
published online: Jul 18, 2023
manuscript accepted: May 15, 2023
manuscript revision received: May 12, 2023
manuscript revision requested: Mar 1, 2023
manuscript received: Jul 25, 2022
Open Access (paper may be downloaded free of charge)
Abstract
This paper describes the first-ever operational contrail avoidance trial in the real world, which took place in the region of Maastricht Upper Area Control (including the northwest of Germany, the Benelux countries and part of the North Sea) in the year 2021. Contrail avoidance could be an efficient method for mitigating the climate impact of aviation. Applying a deliberate experiment design, air traffic was deviated every other day by changing the flight altitude by up to 2000 ft up or down if potential persistent contrails were predicted. Whether deviations were successful on average was checked using satellite images of high clouds and by application of a contrail detection algorithm, which makes use of the properties of contrails. Despite the fact that forecasting persistent contrails remains a challenge, the trial was successful at a significance level of 97.5 %, i.e., on average persistent contrails can be avoided for regular flights in the real world with a small intervention in the vertical flight path. The experiment is an important step towards a regular operational reduction of the aviation climate impact by means of air traffic management. Nevertheless, many open questions need to be solved prior to an operational implementation of contrail avoidance or climate optimised flight trajectories in legal ATM procedures.
Keywords
contrail avoidance • aviation climate impact • real flight trial • ice super-saturated regions • contrail detection