FlyATM4E, a recently-completed SESAR 3 JU project, explored how aviation can reduce its climate effects by flying alternative, climate-optimised trajectories which avoid those regions of the atmosphere where aviation emissions induce a large climate effect.
Aviation contributes to more than 2 % of global climate effect. This number increases when non-CO2 effects (contrails, water vapour, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter emissions) on climate are considered. Optimising aircraft trajectories with regard to their climate impacts can help tackle this. Addressing this is the EU-funded FlyATM4E project, funded within the framework of the SESAR Joint Undertaking, a public-private partnership set up to modernise Europe’s air traffic management system. "FlyATM4E explored how aviation can reduce its climate effects by flying alternative, climate-optimised trajectories which avoid those regions of the atmosphere where aviation emissions induce a large climate effect,” explains Sigrun Matthes, project coordinator. The central element in this mitigation strategy is the concept of how to provide spatially and temporally resolved information on the climate effects of aviation’s non-CO2 emissions to inform airspace users of regions with significant non-CO2 effects. For example, because of the formation of contrails or strong ozone production, if aviation avoids such induced changes in the atmosphere, it can also avoid increasing radiatively active species and by this warming the atmosphere.” In this way, aviation can reduce its contribution to climate change,” adds Matthes.
Identifying climate-optimised aircraft routes
A key achievement of FlyATM4E is making an open-source library available which combines data from numerical weather forecasts with mathematical algorithms to inform users with a spatial and temporal resolved data product on those regions where aviation emissions have a large climate effect. “Having such a service at hand offers the possibility of aircraft trajectory planning and optimisation for identifying alternative trajectories with lower climate effects and identifying climate-optimised trajectories,” adds Matthes. FlyATM4E has also explored the mitigation potential of such climate-optimised trajectories for a set of case studies in three different flight planning numerical simulation environments. “In a European traffic sample, optimisations show that for a modest increase of about 1 % in operating costs, a reduction of climate effects in the order of 20-50 % can be achieved by assuring efficient implementation among those flights with the highest mitigation potentials,” reports Matthes. A central element of these key achievements is that FlyATM4E has developed concepts that allow for the incorporation of prevailing uncertainties in the aforementioned simulations. This ensures robust decision making under uncertainty conditions which prevail because of, for example, uncertainties in the weather forecasts.
Exploring mitigation potentials for aviation climate effects
Looking towards the future, Matthes notes: “As a next step, a novel meteorological service developed by FlyATM4E will need to be implemented in the simulation environments for operational flight planning, comprising air traffic management and air traffic control.” To achieve this, close collaboration with service providers is required to assure efficient provision of information consisting of spatially and temporally resolved information on climate effects, e.g. climate effect of contrails and NOx-induced ozone and methane changes. Existing infrastructure will also need to be expanded to consider the climate effect of aviation during the trajectory optimisation process. In parallel, research will be required to further advance on the understanding and representation of non-CO2 climate effects, relying on state-of-the-art numerical atmospheric modelling and observations. “To facilitate these plans, collaboration with concerned aviation stakeholders and policy makers will be required to align current research and development work with implementation of market-based measures. This will provide incentives for exploiting mitigation potentials for aviation climate effects,” concludes Matthes.
(Source: Cordis)
