Contrail Prevention Studies/Trials

[TEEJ]

I noted the following during a search. Please feel free to update the thread.

July 2025

EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, responsible for managing the upper airspace in one of Europe's busiest airspace areas, is harnessing Google's contrail prediction tools and satellite image recognition as part of an operational trial to further advance research into contrail prevention.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8WrCA5w2ZM


March 2025

From the Copenhagen Contrails Conference: Airlines and tech companies are testing contrail avoidance in simulations and real-life trials. This session will give you a quick idea of the results, challenges, and learnings from these experiences.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QavgYP1f5I

 

[yoshy]

I previously assumed contrails would have a net cooling effect by reflecting sunlight, but my assumption was wrong (though it's small compared to other sources):

The researchers found that contrails have an overall warming effect, acting like a light blanket. "The contrails are trapping more heat in the atmosphere compared to cooling from reflected sunlight," Spangenberg said. However, Bedka and Spangenberg said that the effect is still quite small. "When you consider all of the man-made radiative forcing and all the changes we're making that can affect climate, contrails are one of the smaller effects, compared to carbon dioxide and other emissions," Spangenberg said. "Globally, you would have to increase the contrail effect by roughly 100 times to get the same effect as all of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/feature-articles/trail-contrails