The E-CONTRAIL project concluded on 30 November 2025, after two and a half years of research into contrails and aviation-induced cloudiness — a major contributor to aviation’s non-CO₂ climate impact.
The project has produced a range of deliverables to support climate-aligned aviation policy, including AI detection tools, predictive models, radiative forcing evaluations, visualisation dashboards, and open-source libraries.
Policy brief: making contrails visible
A key output is the Policy Brief “Making Contrails Visible” , which summarises the scientific results and provides clear guidance for mitigation strategies. Using AI and satellite imagery, E-CONTRAIL systematically detected, classified, and quantified contrails across the Euro-Atlantic region year-round.
Based on this evidence, the Policy Brief recommends:
- Prioritise nighttime flights for mitigation – Contrails formed at night trap longwave radiation, producing a net warming effect without compensating cooling.
- Target winter operations – Contrails have the greatest net warming impact during autumn and winter, whereas summer flights generate less persistent contrails.
- Focus on oceanic flights – Persistent contrails occur most often over the southern North Atlantic, where long, high-altitude flights in cold, humid air favour formation.
- Invest in fundamental contrail research – Continued development of models, detection algorithms, datasets, and avoidance strategies is essential for effective climate policy.
- The illustrated comic “A Real Contrail Story…” embedded in the brief provides a visual summary of these findings, making the science accessible to policymakers and the wider community.
Advancing tools for research and policy
Beyond the Policy Brief, E-CONTRAIL has delivered a suite of AI-based detection and predictive tools, radiative forcing evaluations, and a visualisation dashboard, enabling researchers, regulators, and operators to analyse contrail impacts at scale. Open-source libraries ensure that the methodology can be widely adopted and applied in future studies.
Together, these outputs provide a solid foundation for evidence-based decision-making, helping aviation stakeholders target mitigation where it will have the greatest climate benefit and supporting the development of a more climate-resilient air transport sector.
