Trajectory Optimization and climate change

OUR GOALS

Planing climate-aware trajectories

The strong growth rate of the aviation industry in recent years has created significant challenges in terms of environmental impact. Air traffic contributes to climate change through the emission of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other non-CO₂ effects, and the associated climate impact is expected to soar further. The mitigation of CO₂ contributions to the net climate impact can be achieved using novel propulsion, jet fuels, and continuous improvements of aircraft efficiency, whose solutions lack in immediacy. On the other hand, the climate impact associated with non-CO₂ emissions, being responsible for two-thirds of aviation radiative forcing, varies highly with geographic location, altitude, and time of the emission. Consequently, these effects can be reduced by planning proper climate-aware trajectories.

By taking into account the dependencies of non-CO₂ effects in the aircraft trajectory planning, operational
mitigation towards climate optimized aircraft trajectories is possible. Thus, to consider the climate impact of aviation in the aircraft path planning, information on the climate-sensitive regions, i.e., regions where those non-CO₂ effects are significantly enhanced, needs to be available. Moreover, aircraft dynamical models and the optimization approach are crucial factors affecting the performance and mitigation potential of the optimized trajectories. Studies differ, in the optimization algorithm, incorporation of climate impacts as the objective function, number of flights, and maneuvres. That is why our study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art studies for the past two decades, i.e., 2000–2021, considering these factors, e.g., aircraft dynamical model, climate metrics, and optimization approaches.