W H A T
That's a big question. Let's break this question down:
1. WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
Aviation’s detriment to climate change is two-fold in that it releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and generates cloud contrails that trap those greenhouse gases.
Aviation contributes approximately 4% of anthropogenic (or human-caused) global warming and the effects are immediate compared to CO2 emissions.- 60% of that is attributed to Aircraft Induced Clouds (AICs) or contrails.
- 40% comes from their fuel emissions.
2. WHAT'S AN AIC?
AICs or contrails are thin white trails in the sky that follow aircrafts. They are generated when an aircraft travels through certain atmospheric conditions.
These atmospheric conditions are known as Ice Supersaturated Regions where:
- The temperature is at or below -40°C (313.15 Kelvin)
- Humidity is 100%
When an aicraft passes through an ISSR, long-lived peristent and cirrus contrails may form. Although only 15% of flights generate long-term contrails, these typically last for 2-10 hours. Longer contrails can also spread and merge with othe contrails to form an impenetrable ice layer. These contrails have an immediate effect on global warming because they inhibit radiation from escaping into space and trap it back to the Earth. This radiation is what leads to a global warming effect on Earth.
When aircrafts pass through airspace that is not an ISSR, short-lived contrails may form but these will only last for up to 10 minutes and have a neglibgible effect on global warming.
3. WHAT'S THE PLAN?
The objective of this project is to assist the aviation industry in reducing its contribution to global warming by predicting the presence of ISSRs and the areas in which AICs are most likely to form within the contiguous United States (CONUS).
Flying around the perimeter of ISSRs is usually practical because of their area and the detour would generate additional fuel burning costs/emissions that exceed the benefit of ISSR avoidance. The least prohibitive way for aircraft to avoid ISSRs is by flying over them, 2000-4000 feet. The atmosphere is so homogenous that by increasing elevation by just this small amount, it is extremely likely that this new flight level will put the aircraft in different temperature and humidity conditions that are not conducive to AIC generation. The additional fuel burned for the climb to this level above is counteracted by the lower drag rate at those higher altitudes, neutralizing the fuel burn rate. This operational change would only affect those 15% of flights that are likely to generate contrails. A case study conducted over one year of flights in the CONUS found that when flights routed through ISSR regions increased their flight levels by 2,000-4,000 ft, there was a resulting -63% in net radiative forcing.
W H O
Glad you asked! Partly Cloudy is a team of 5 Data Analytical Engineering students at GMU who have spent 12-weeks working on our capstone. You can learn more about us individually, on the team page. For our capstone, we've partnered with Dr. Sherry the Director for the Center for Air transformation Systems Research (CASTR) here at George Mason University. Our second partner is Mr. Ho, a Software Developer for the IDV tool at Unidata.
You can find out more about these organizations by clicking below:
W H E R E
For our problem, we're just focusing on the contiguous United States. You can explore more of our findings here.
Our analysis focused on 4 Air Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC):
- Washington, D.C.
- Jacksonville, FL
- Miami, FL
- Seattle, WA
W H Y
It is increasingly necessary for companies and industries to adopt more eco-friendly methods to reduce their impact on global warming. The commercial and military aviation sectors are significant contributors to global warming because of the emissions they generate as they fly through the atmosphere.
Avoiding ISSRs is the cheapest and easiest method for aircraft to mitigate the creation of AICs, so the ability to accurately predict their location would allow them to immediately reduce their carbon footprint. flight planning process has several opportunities to modify a flight plan if the flight planners received information regarding the location of an ISSR. flight planners could accurately and easily predict the presence of ISSRs, it would be highly feasible to route aircraft around or above those areas. A convenient, real-time dashboard that showed predicted ISSRs over the next 6 hours would empower flight planners to do this, which would greatly reduce aviation’s impact on climate change.
H O W
Check out a more detailed explaination of our process here