Aviation has a responsibility to mitigate its climate impact as part of global efforts to reduce anthropogenic climate changes. Air traffic operations have significant impacts on air quality, for example in areas adjacent to airports, where optimized trajectories can help to reduce emissions and help to protect human health and the environment.

Disruptive weather events are becoming more frequent and extreme as the climate changes. To become more resilient to weather phenomena, CREATE developed a climate and weather-aware concept of operations (CONOPS) encompassing a multi-aircraft four-dimensional (in space and time) trajectory optimization framework.  It also built an environmental scoring module (ESM) to evaluate the “greenness” of aircraft trajectories. This considers CO2, non-CO2 emissions, and contrail probability formation during the en-route phase of flight, in addition to NOx and particulate matter emissions (related to the impact on air quality) during the approach and departure phase. The algorithmic approach is fast enough to be easily implemented at different stages of the trajectory lifecycle; for example helping to resolve hotspots in the network due to weather hazards, or air quality sensitive regions, within the context of an evolving traffic picture.

The models were tested using fast-time simulation for the North Atlantic region extending into European airspace, and a terminal maneuvering area (TMA) use-case for a typical medium-sized airport (Capodichino) close to a dense population in the Mediterranean.

The scoring, based on environmental performance dashboards common to airlines and air navigation service providers, showed it was possible to exploit detailed and accurate weather predictions to update aircraft trajectories to avoid contrail-sensitive areas, and adverse weather conditions, and minimize the climate impact.

 Benefits

• Reduced climate impact
• Improved environmental performance
• Increased resilience to weather hazards