Google rerouted hundreds of flights to cut climate-warming contrails

A trial involving thousands of flights between the US and Europe has found that planes produce fewer contrails if they follow flight paths recommended by an artificial intelligence to reduce their global warming impact.

The streaks of condensation triggered by soot particles produced by aircraft engines are thought to cause more warming than the carbon dioxide that planes emit. Research has also shown that some ice-rich regions of the upper atmosphere are more likely to form contrails when a plane passes through them, and that AI can predict where these regions will be using detailed weather forecasts.

There have been small-scale trials showing that planes rerouted through these regions will produce fewer contrails, but the practice has yet to be applied to commercial flights at scale.

Now, Dinesh Sanekommu at Google and his colleagues have used an AI…