Google, American Airlines and Breakthrough Energy have come up with a technology to reduce contrails with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The three companies were undergoing research led by Google to find out whether AI could help airlines to reduce their climate warming impact by avoiding routes where contrails could form. According to the announcement, American Airlines’ pilots flew over 70 test flights over a period of six months.
The flights used Google’s AI-based predictions that were cross-referenced with Breakthrough Energy’s open-source contrail models, enabling crews to avoid altitudes where the likelihood of contrails forming is increased.
“After these test flights, we analyzed satellite imagery and found that the pilots were able to reduce contrails by 54%. The research is the first proof point that commercial flights can verifiably avoid contrails and thereby reduce their climate impact,” said a release.
Google said that this technology has led to an increase in average fuel consumption by 2%. Citing a recent study, Google further added that a small percentage of flights need to be adjusted to avoid the majority of contrail warming, resulting in a potential total fuel consumption increase of 0.3%.
“This suggests that contrails could be avoided at scale for around $5-25/ton CO2e [carbon dioxide equivalent] using our existing predictions, making it a cost-effective warming-reduction measure, and further improvements are expected,” Google said.
“Contrails are formed when aircraft fly through humid air, resulting in cirrus clouds that remain in the air for minutes or hours depending on the atmospheric conditions. While the clouds can reflect additional sunlight, they also trap large amounts of heat that would otherwise leave the Earth’s atmosphere creating a net warming effect,” the statement read.
Avoiding flying through areas that create contrails can reduce warming. The challenge is knowing which flight routes will create contrails,” Google concluded.