Canadian researchers have an eye on the sky, tracking contrails with cameras

Using a camera network, the researchers are tracking contrails to mitigate aviation-induced climate change. CTV London's Reta Ismail has the story.

Researchers at Western University are tackling aviation-induced climate change – by using existing cameras to track contrails.

They’re called contrails short for condensation trails, visible in the sky. And according to scientists, these thin white trails impact the environment.

“Aviation is a significant source of climate change impact and a portion of that is not direct CO2 emissions, but the secondary effects that come from contrails,” said Denis Vida, a physics and astronomy professor at Western University.

To mitigate the impact of contrails, a team of researchers from Western, along with the Global Meteor Network (GMN), is working with an experienced pilot to change the flying altitude of planes by using ground-based cameras to observe airplanes.

“Small percentage of flights, about 15 per cent, would need to make little corrections just in height that don’t cost much to eliminate contrails entirely,” explained Vida. “The major problem is that, there’s no data to inform the models to send the airplanes in the right direction, and we’re changing that with our project.”

The project is now financially backed by Google and Breakthrough Energy.

Vida founded and now coordinates GMN, a game-changing international collaboration that has more than 1,400 cameras globally to capture meteor events and now survey aircraft contrails.

This project started after Luc Busquin, an experienced captain with Alaska Airlines and founder of ContrailCast, reached out to Vida about using a GMN meteor camera to observe contrails for climate impact research.

“This solution was answering a need from the contrails researchers that they needed to be able to associate contrails with flights, but they were not able to do. And this solution was an answer to the problem,” said Busquin.

Vida says existing geostationary satellite systems on average only detect contrails 30 minutes after formation, limiting their utility for actionable mitigation strategies. GMN, with its global distribution of calibrated cameras that directly observe contrails as they are created, offers a unique opportunity.

By the end of the year, the team hopes to deliver the first open-access dataset linking contrails with flights and atmospheric conditions.

This will give air traffic controllers and various other stakeholders relevant information to re-organize the flow of flight patterns and create real change in future aircraft designs and technologies.