Assessing and Modelling Climate Optimal Flights Using Open Surveillance and Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

Sustainability is the biggest challenge facing the aerospace industry today. With the global number of flights expected to rise, the climate impact of aviation will continue to increase. Current research states that the rerouting of aircraft through wind-optimisation for the purpose of fuel usage minimisation and emission reduction is an effective sustainability contribution. However, these routing models only optimize for minimum fuel burn, not necessarily minimum climate impact. Flying efficiently through wind fields could mean flying through regions with higher climate impact, for example, where warming contrails are formed. This potentially forfeits the advantage of the reduced emissions from the wind-optimized route. By bringing together fields such as satellite remote sensing, atmospheric science and aircraft surveillance data, a climate optimized free routing model can be made. This paper creates a climate optimized free routing airspace model by incorporating knowledge from the aforementioned fields and existing wind-optimization models with AI and open-source tools.