Google has been working with American Airlines and Bill Gates’ climate investment fund, Breakthrough Energy, to chart more sustainable flight routes. The aim is to help pilots limit a flight’s impact on the climate by avoiding routes that create contrails, those white streaks in the sky that planes sometimes leave behind.
Contrails are a big problem for the planet because they trap heat, accounting for about 35 percent of aviation’s global warming impact. Using satellite imagery and AI, they developed a way to forecast where contrails are most likely to form. That could give pilots a chance to avoid them and minimize aviation’s environmental footprint in the process.
Contrary to what conspiracy theorists say, the streaks behind are not…
