The project will:

1.Quantify the impact of contrails on cirrus clouds and deepen the understanding of aviation non-CO2 effects on climate;

2. Identify the most relevant climate metrics to assess and predict the aggregated impact of CO2 and non-CO2 emissions on climate change;

3. Quantify the impact of climate change on aviation focusing on the impact of higher temperatures on aircraft performance during take-off

4. Create user-centric, innovative services for a greener and more climate-resilient aviation

AEROPLANE will stimulate a participatory process involving the relevant end-users, from the definition of their needs to the co-design and co-development of the solutions to address the main issues.

Finally, the validation of these solutions will be conducted through three specific case studies. the case studies will help not only with the identification of users’ problems and needs to be addressed, but will also contribute in defining the opportunities within each case study and the AEROPLANE solutions.

Case Study n.1 - Non- CO₂ impact of flight operations

Case Study 1 focuses on contrail formation and the contrails’ impact on cirrus clouds' heat-trapping capacity. It will assess the CO₂-equivalence metrics used to quantify the contrail impact. The objective is to create a service that helps identify routes which minimise contrail formation and their cumulative CO₂ and non-CO₂ impact.

Case Study n.2 - Impacts of heatwaves on take-off performance and noise distribution at airports

Aircraft climb rates at take-off typically decrease with increasing temperatures. Case Study 2 investigates how higher temperatures due to climate change will impact aircraft take-off performance at European airports, also considering how reduced climb rates affect noise distribution. Also, Case Study 2 will map key airports most exposed to higher temperatures, particularly those with short runways with little room for extension and provide adaptation measures.

Case Study n.3 - Impact of climate change on new entrants and future RPAS traffic

As Urban Air Mobility (UAM) based on RPAS will be increasingly adopted for many purposes, such as organ transport and medicine delivery, the effects of climate change on UAM are largely unknown. Case Study 3 investigates the impact of changing weather conditions on UAM operations, specifically the identification of conditions under which RPAS have limited performance or even inability due to extreme weather conditions.

To learn more on AEROPLANE and its research on how to improve aviation’s impact on the environment and resilience to climate change, follow the project on Twitter/X and LinkedIn. Alternatively, you can contact the project at at info.aeroplane@dblue.it.