AI has started to be used to help alleviate the impacts of climate change by reducing contrails of planes.
Contrails (condensation trails) are consisted of ice crystals that form around particles of carbon emitted by planes' engines. They form when the plane goes through layers of humidity and can hang on from a few minutes to 18 hours.
Since they trap heat in the atmosphere, they are responsible for more than a third of global warming impact of aviation according to the 2022 IPCC Report.
To find a solution, Google, American Airlines and Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy worked together. Google's AI and contrail models of Breakthrough Energy helped predict routes that are likely to avoid contrails. Over a period of six months, American Airlines pilots made 70 test flights on such predicted routes.
In these test flights, the pilots could reduce contrails by 54%.
However, flights that tried to avoid contrails were seen to burn 2% additional fuel.
Even though Google says that this addition of fuel is minimal, environmental groups warn against this technology as being an absolute solution and highlight that this shouldn't be an excuse to fly more.
“It is vital that we address the climate-wrecking impact of contrails but this must be accompanied by an urgent reduction in air traffic,” says Hannah Lawrence of Stay Grounded which is a global network supporting climate-friendly alternatives to flying.
While another person from another group promoting sustainability in aviation points out that a previous research held has actually proved that avoiding contrails could reduce fuel use. However, he stresses out that airlines could view it as a carbon credit, saying "We don’t think it’s right at all to say that by avoiding warming contrails, our airlines should then have a licence to pump ever more CO2 into the atmosphere".
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