Advancing mEasures to Reduce aviatiOn imPact on cLimate and enhAnce resilieNce to climate-changE

Project Information

AEROPLANE

Grant agreement ID: 101114682

DOI

10.3030/101114682

Project closed

EC signature date 5 May 2023

Start date 1 September 2023

End date 28 February 2026

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 810 918,75

EU contribution

€ 659 000,00

Coordinated by

DEEP BLUE SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AEROPLANE (Advancing mEasures to Reduce aviatiOn imPact on cLimate and enhAnce resilieNce to climate-changE)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Recent global disasters have highlighted the perils of climate change. The aviation industry is intricately linked to this issue due to its substantial greenhouse gas emissions, which lead to increasingly devastating extreme weather events that in turn significantly impact the industry itself. The EU-funded AEROPLANE project has a mission to create an innovative toolkit that can mitigate emissions associated with aviation while also equipping the aviation sector to respond effectively to rapid weather and climate shifts. The project will leverage insights from various researchers specialising in aviation emissions and their impacts, developing fresh approaches to both the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change in terms of reducing vulnerability to weather-related phenomena. The project aims at developing a toolset for reducing the aviation impact on climate and to enhance the sector’s resilience to climate change. The idea is to advance the knowledge and operationalize the monitoring on the impact of aviation on climate, and, concurrently, to assess the resilience of the aviation sector to the exacerbation of extreme events due to climate change.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

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.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Partial results at the end of RP1 include:
- The seasonal occurrence maps of embedded contrails and the properties of the cirrus clouds.
- The recommendations on the ability of different climate metrics to accurately measure the climate impact of flights.
- The forecasts of temperature and wind change at 30 selected ECAC airports in future climate compared to historical conditions.
- The production of insightful statistics of take-off distance required for future higher temperatures at each of the 30 ECAC airports selected for analysis.