One possibility to reduce the climate impact of aviation is the avoidance of climate-sensitive regions, which is synonymous with climate-optimised flight planning. Those regions can be identified by algorithmic functions for nitrogen oxides (NOx), water vapour (H2O) as well as contrail cirrus, which provide a measure of climate effects associated with corresponding emissions. In a recent study carried out in the ClimOp project, the Technical University of Delft evaluated the effectiveness of reducing the aviation-induced climate impact via ozone (O3) formation (resulting from NOx emissions), when solely using O3 functions for the aircraft trajectory optimisation strategy. The effectiveness of such a strategy and the associated potential mitigation of climate effects was explored by using a chemistry-climate model with various submodels.
Read more on the ClimOp study: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/9/5/231
