In the Reporting Period 1, the project focused on:
1- Identifying the needs of different aviation stakeholders through interviews
2- Translating these needs into clear scientific questions that guides the direction of the scientific advancements pursued by the project
3- Producing the scientific advancements necessary to generate the solution to the stakeholders’ needs and pain points, and co-design with them such a solution.
The main achievements include:
- The analysis of seasonally and spatially resolved occurrence frequency of embedded contrails and generation of seasonal maps.
- The quantification of the effect of embedded contrails on the properties of cirrus clouds (cloud optical depth, ice crystal number concentration, ice crystal radius)
- The initiation of the assessment of the radiative effect of embedded contrails and their climate impact.
- The production of informed recommendations based on a quantitative assessment of the ability of different climate metrics to accurately measure the climate impact of flights.
- The production of insightful statistics of take-off distance required for future higher temperatures at each of the 30 ECAC airports selected for analysis.
- The collection of User needs mapped into technical, functional and non-functional requirements of the Integrated Toolkit for aviation to be developed in the second part of the project.
In RP2, the working activities focused on:
1- Finalising scientific advancements, particularly in the forecasting of CO2 and non-CO2 effects of individual flights, radiative forcing of embedded contrails, and take-off performance reduction at higher temperatures, to create solutions for stakeholder needs and co-designing those solutions through active collaboration.
2- Developing practical tools for stakeholders to evaluate the contribution of individual flights to global warming and to assess the impact of climate change on aviation operations, specifically take-off performance and drone operability.
3- Validating these tools through two distinct validation exercises of increasing complexity.
The main achievements include:
- Embedded-Contrail Impact: combined new knowledge with a radiative-transfer database to estimate for the first time the climate impact of embedded contrails, quantified to approximately 10% of the warming effect caused by line-shaped contrails.
- Climate metrics and forecasting models: developed a system to calculate Average Temperature Response (ATR20) for flights. This included a machine-learning model that was refined to improve forecasting performance and account for uncertainties at the flight dispatch stage.
- Aviation resilience analysis: completed study on how future temperature increases will affect take-off distance required and maximum take-off mass at 30 ECAC airports, identifying that some flights may need to reduce payloads by 5–15% by 2065.
- Identification of Adaptation Measures: identified and ranked eight adaptation measures for Air Traffic Management, ranging from operational rescheduling and payload reduction to structural infrastructure enhancements.
- AEROPLANE Integrated Toolkit: A proof-of-concept toolkit was developed and successfully validated by the Advisory Board. It allows users to visualize climate impacts of trajectories and assess climate-related risks to airport and drone operations.
- Dissemination: The consortium published four scientific papers (with more in progress) and disseminated results at events (e.g. Airspace World 2025), conferences (e.g. ECCA2025, EASN 2025, EGU2024-2025), and sectoral working groups (e.g. EASA, EUROCONTROL, SESAR), and collaborated with other research projects on specific topics (e.g. ML with the E-CONTRAIL project and climate risk for airports with the ALBATROS project).
