Google partners with the aviation industry to prevent climate-warming contrails with AI

Google has announced a new partnership with the U.K. government and the aviation industry to combat climate-warming contrails through an AI-driven initiative called Operation Blue Skies. Contrails, those white clouds that form behind airplanes at cruising altitudes, are a significant contributor to the aviation industry's climate impact, accounting for around a third of it.

These contrails form when water vapor condenses around jet exhaust emissions, and they can linger and expand into cloud layers that retain heat. The plan is to use AI to identify contrail-sensitive regions of the atmosphere, based on data gathered from earlier trials, satellite imagery, and historical flight data. These regions will be correlated with weather forecasts to predict where contrails are most likely to form.

The forecasts will be provided to the U.K.'s National Air Traffic Services (NATS), enabling air traffic controllers to steer pilots clear of these zones. The trial, which will last for 30 months with two four-month operational periods, will focus on the Shanwick airspace in the eastern North Atlantic corridor, expected to see around 10,000 flights during test windows.

While the redirection of 1% to 5% of flights may seem small, it could demonstrate a significant reduction in contrail formation. The initiative also involves the U.K.'s Met Office, Contrails.org, researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge, and Google's U.K. subsidiary, which is contributing pro-bono AI research and computing resources.

The goal is to demonstrate the operational feasibility of solving contrail warming and provide a blueprint for managing airspaces and reducing the aviation industry's climate impact.