ATM Contrail Mitigation Options Environmental Study

Dates: 2005
Partners: ISA Software

This study investigated the potential environmental impact of several Air Traffic Management (ATM) options to guide air traffic around, above and below airspace volumes of cold and moist air likely to produce contrails. Ten typical days of 2004 traffic in the western European region were analysed. For each of these days, the meteorological situation was assessed to identify areas of moist and cold airspace volumes where contrails were most likely to be formed.

Using the RAMS Plus ATM simulator and the zones identified using the GAES-Contrails model in conjunction with the MM5 Meteorological modelling tool, possible rerouting options were examined for aircraft that entered high contrails-risk airspace volumes. Three distinct avoidance scenarios were considered:

• air traffic is guided around high contrails risk areas
• air traffic is guided above high contrails risk areas
• air traffic is guided below high contrails risk areas

For each of the 10 traffic days, four scenarios were simulated – the fourth being a standard baseline scenario where no environmental management was involved. For each scenario, fuel burn and emissions were calculated and the contrails coverage was gauged.

To best understand the potential for such a contrail mitigation scheme, five "heavy contrail days" and five "light contrail days" were considered to try to establish an upper and lower boundary to the contrail avoidance problem.