Airplane contrails contribute to climate change. Google aims to fix that with AI

One of the biggest causes of climate change remains the airline industry. Now, AI is working to help.

Traveling by air is a significant cause of pollution, largely because of jet fuel but also because of contrails.

Those thin white lines behind planes “trap heat that would have escaped the atmosphere otherwise,” Google’s Dinesh Sanekommu said.

Google is using AI to figure out how airlines can make fewer contrails.

“What AI does is with satellite imagery, weather data and flight data, we can understand which flights have made contrails in the past and then we can better predict which ones will make contrails in the future,” Sanekommu said.

Google is already working with American Airlines to better forecast and avoid contrails. So far, it’s working – fewer clouds created resulting in less heat trapped.

NBC Bay Area’s Scott Budman has more in the video report above.