Sustainable Aviation: How Google uses AI to Tackle Contrails
The Royal Meteorological Society estimates that contrails could be more responsible for global warming than carbon emissions.
The society reports that consistent contrail clouds can trap heat in the atmosphere by disrupting the balance between the sun's incoming solar radiation and the heat being emitted from the Earth's surface.
Google has partnered with American Airlines to test solutions for this over a six month period.
Max Vogler, Software Engineer at Google, says: “Our predictions are accurate enough to significantly reduce climate impacts.
“In our study with American Airlines, pilots were able to avoid more than half of the contrails by using our flight paths.
“This has also been confirmed by independent researchers.”
What are contrail clouds?
Contrail clouds are wispy lines of clouds formed behind an aircraft in the sky.
It is formed by a mix of water vapour, cool air and tiny particles where the water vapour can condense.
The hydrogen in jet engines fuel reacts with oxygen in the air as a by-product from the fuel producing water vapour.
When air temperatures are below -40°C, the water vapour condenses normally attaching to soot particles emitted from the engine.
The fog of the water droplets freeze which then creates a contrail.
Contrails can span hundreds to several thousands of metres long, sometimes disappearing quickly and sometimes remaining for longer periods.
What is Google’s solution?
Engineers have been working with AI to create technology that can evaluate vast amounts of weather, satellite and flight data, predicting when and where contrails will appear.
The company says this will create an ideal basis for decision making for pilots and flight dispatchers to adjust flight altitude to the correct environmental conditions.
Within a six month trial, 64% of contrails were avoided and its length shortened by 54%.
The diversions increased fuel consumption by 2% for the affected aircrafts, but the entire airline fleet only increased fuel consumption by 0.3%.
Max says “Google's Sustainable Travel team is based in Zurich. Here, we combine the innovative company culture with the European focus on sustainability.
“Our team works to make climate research accessible to airlines and flight planning software.
“We help our industry partners integrate the forecasts into their systems. We also train flight planning employees to effectively adjust flight routes.”
How else is Google using AI to better the environment?
Google has been expanding with its outreach of Google cloud and what the technology can be used for.
Adam Elman, Sustainability Director at Google, said on Linkedin: “Climate action needs action and one of the best parts of my job is working with people who’ve chosen to use their unique skills and passion to drive sustainability forward.
“I recently joined a panel with two such changemakers: Max Vogler, a Google Software engineer based in Zurich and Martina Löfqvist from geospatial AI start-up and Google Cloud, Picterra.
“We spoke about how AI is already helping people, companies and governments to make an immediate impact in the fight against climate change.”
Picterra can now be found on Google Cloud, enabling organisations to access scalable geospatial monitoring capabilities faster.
Picterra says that as pressure mounts for companies to manage environmental impacts, organisations are seeking solutions that offer trusted and verifiable data to track sustainability KPIs, manage operational and reputational risks and enhance governance.
Pierrick Poulenas, CEO at Picterra, says "We aim to make geospatial intelligence scalable and accessible, helping organizations globally to understand and act on data-informed insights.
“With Picterra available on Google Cloud Marketplace, organisations can now use their cloud spend on our solutions, simplifying procurement and ease of access.
“By leveraging geospatial intelligence, businesses gain a reliable solution that strengthens compliance, reduces costs and rebuilds trust in sustainability initiatives."
