IATA report: Aviation contrails and their climate effectApril 30, 2024. Excellent 35-page report by IATA and partners about contrails.
"The aviation community, formed by industry, governments, universities, and research institutions are actively researching ways to minimize the warming impacts of contrails. This report addresses the urgent need to further understand and mitigate the formation of persistent warming contrails."
https://www.iata.org/contentassets/726b8a2559ad48fe9decb6f2534549a6/aviation-contrails-climate-impact-report.pdf (Can't include all the relevant parts so you'll have to read the PDF. Here is some, though.)
FLYHT is in the mix. FLYHT's WVSS-II sensor is mentioned in numerous places - cost, suitability, effectiveness, extent of existing program. These instances can be found using a text search within the document. The Tamdar sensor is also mentioned briefly.
See the executive summary, page 3.
Recommendations...
"The report advocates for short, medium and long-term approaches to tackling the climate effect of contrails.
In the immediate term (2024-2030), prioritizing the reduction of CO2 emissions should take precedence over uncertainties in contrail detection and climate impact. Actions now include:
increasing airline participation in sensor programs;
continuing scientific research; and
improving humidity and climate models.
Mid-term actions (2030-2040) involve:
establishing standards for data transmission;
continuous validation of models; and
encouraging aircraft manufacturers to include provisions for meteorological observations.
Longer-term actions (2040-2050) focus on increasing the world fleet providing data and having a full understanding of the non-CO2 effects of alternative fuels. These action items collectively aim to mitigate the climate impact of aviation while advancing scientific understanding and technological capabilities."
Where FLYHT's sensors draw interest...
See page 20 for "
Benefits of water vapor measurements to airlines and to the scientific community".
"The benefits of aircraft-based weather observations have been extensively reported by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) [21] [24]. A summary of aircraft-based humidity measurement benefits can also be found in the joint WMO-IATA initiative WICAP (WMO-IATA Collaborative AMDAR Program) [25] [26].
These are summarized here for brevity..." (on page 20)
(This copy-and-paste may work.)
Benefits to airlines
• Increased understanding of non-CO2 emissions for their potential mitigation.
• Increased probability of contrail avoidance success.
• Reduces environmental risks of incomplete contrail avoidance strategies.
• More humidity readings can improve weather event forecasting at airports for better planning (i.e., fog, thunderstorms). (70% of all delays at high-capacity airports are weather related)
• Safer and more accurate route planning to avoid severe weather, as well as optimization of fuel planning and consumption.
• Customer perception improved due to taking a leading role in reducing environmental footprint as well as contributing to environmental and climate concerns.
Benefits to scientific and weather community
• Supplement existing radiosonde network to increase spatial and temporal resolution of upper-atmosphere -> better weather forecasting.
• Increased understanding of contrail formation, persistence, and their climate effect.
• Increased validation of current contrail prediction models, and models which predict ISSR location, lifetimes, and behaviour.
• Improved warnings and forecasts on:
• Precipitation type and intensity
• Thunderstorms/heavy rain/ flooding events
• Low-level wind shear/crosswinds
• Low visibility conditions
• Icing/frost/fog
• Droughts/ wildfire weather
