Major air carriers are focused on contrails, once considered an innocent byproduct of water vapor. But they are actually a significant environmental detriment because they hold heat in the atmosphere that would otherwise escape.
American Airlines and Google were able to cut contrails made by jets by more than half during a small trial, a move that could significantly reduce the global-warming footprint of the travel industry, but with a slight increase to fuel use.
“Avoiding contrails might be one of the best ways to limit aviation’s climate impact, and now we have a clear demonstration that it’s possible to do so,” said Marc Shapiro, Breakthrough Energy’s director of contrail studies. “This study is a great example of what happens when creative, ambitious organizations work together to better understand and solve a tough problem, and we’re grateful for American’s and Google’s partnership.
“One of the main reasons that we had success is that we had a small group of pilots who were really excited about trying this,” said American Airlines vice president of sustainability Jill Blickstein. “And then we recruited a couple of additional pilots who didn’t really know what we were talking about, but when they did it, they found that it was very interesting.
The worst contrails happen at night when the earth is naturally cooling without sunlight but man-made clouds at that critical altitude can block heat from escaping. Some theorize that contrails during the day may actually block light that bounces off the Earth and turns into heat.
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