On April 17, Prof. Manuel Soler, Head of the Aircraft Operations Lab at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, delivered an outreach talk at IES Julio Verne for vocational training students in Higher Education programmes in Electronics and Electrotechnics.
Titled “Chemtrails or Contrails? That Is the Question”, the session explored how aviation contributes to climate change not only through CO₂ emissions, but also through non-CO₂ effects such as condensation trails and the cloudiness they can generate. Students discovered how smarter flight operations can help reduce these impacts by rerouting aircraft away from atmospheric regions prone to persistent contrail formation.
The talk also highlighted how cutting-edge research combines satellite data, artificial intelligence, and climate science to better understand and mitigate aviation-induced climate effects. Examples were drawn from the European E-CONTRAIL project and the national CLIMATION project, both coordinated by Prof. Soler.
By connecting aerospace challenges with the students’ background in electronics and electrotechnics, the session showed how the technologies they are learning today can help shape cleaner skies tomorrow. We are grateful to the students and staff of IES Julio Verne for their warm welcome, curiosity, and active participation, and we hope the visit sparked new ideas for future careers in innovation, engineering, and sustainability.