Technology leaders call for expanding research on non-CO2 emissions

The technology leaders released a joint statement at the 2024 Farnborough International Airshow emphasising the importance of accelerating efforts critical to understanding and reducing aviation’s non-CO2 effects.

The aerospace industry actively works to improve the understanding of non-CO2 emissions in collaboration with research institutions, universities and other stakeholders. Following an event today, the forum called for increased research funding for science needed to underpin technology choices, operational changes and policy decisions.

The leaders jointly call for increased research funding to develop the science needed to underpin technology choices, operational changes and policy decisions. We will continue to engage academia, the global climate and weather modelling community, government research organisations and industry partners to advance seven priorities for research:

1. Improve understanding of contrail formation, persistence, and climate impact. Progressing the science of contrail physics combined with increasing the fidelity of upper tropospheric humidity data in global climate and weather modelling will enable more accurate contrail forecasts and analysis data sets for performing impact assessment.

2. Improve understanding of emissions properties. The properties of fuels such as conventional jet fuel, SAF, and hydrogen as well as the combustion characteristics of engine technologies impact emissions properties that play a role in contrail formation and persistence.

3. Build research on aerosol cloud interactions. Aerosol cloud interactions result from the ability of aerosol particles to cause the formation of droplets or ice particles, affecting the radiative properties of clouds. Research is required to better understand these interactions and their potential impacts.

4. Improve understanding of the radiative impact and modelling uncertainty of NOx emissions. The effect of NOx emissions depends on where and when emissions are released into the atmosphere as well as atmospheric conditions. Further studies are needed to fully characterise these dependencies.

5. Improve understanding of the interdependencies and trade-offs of aviation emissions (NOx, soot, contrails, CO2, and noise). To enable management of aviation emissions for total climate impact reduction, the challenges of comparing impacts across emissions species with different characteristics and interactions need to be addressed.

6. Establish and improve common models for quantifying the effect of aviation on climate. Collaboration across communities working on contrails and cloud physics, atmospheric chemistry, fuels properties and chemistry, and aircraft data collection to support this research is essential and can benefit climate science and weather prediction.

7. Research on airspace network impacts of mitigation should be further investigated. Large scale research projects and operational analysis should be developed to better understand potential impacts to civil airspace operations.