Contrails.org, a project at Breakthrough Energy, and its team of climate leaders and researchers, will use Aireon’s global automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) to bring new insights to aviation’s impact on the environment through contrails research.
Condensation trails (contrails) are created when soot and water vapor are emitted from an aircraft’s jet engines in a cold and humid atmosphere. For roughly 5% of flights, contrails act as a potent greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere, and are likely responsible for 1-2% of all human-caused global warming. Managing these contrails is an important pathway for aviation to significantly reduce its climate impact in the next decade.
Contrails.org will use Aireon’s AireonINSIGHTS data to investigate the impact of different flight trajectories on contrail creation, and study performance of airlines who are trialing different flight trajectories and monitoring surrounding areas to minimize contrail formation.
“Aireon is committed to supporting efforts industry-wide to reduce aviation’s impact on the environment. Our customers use our data to more efficiently route and more closely separate aircraft, which cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions. Contrails.org is taking our data a step further to examine new and innovative ways to reduce contrails,” said Jennifer Andersson, director of commercial data sales at Aireon. “We look forward to seeing what further insights Aireon data can unlock for environmental research.”
About Breakthrough Energy
Breakthrough Energy (BE) is a global platform focused on accelerating clean energy innovation and building the industries of the future. Founded by Bill Gates in 2015, BE works across every major source of emissions to drive down costs, eliminate green premiums, and make clean technologies affordable and accessible worldwide. BE supports investment-ready breakthroughs at every stage of the innovation pipeline — through our Discovery platform for pre-venture innovation, a suite of venture capital funds backing 120+ climate tech companies, and flexible capital for real-world deployment. BE is finding solutions, funding them, and bringing people together to scale them.
