Concept of risk-aware contrail avoidance strategies
Audran Borella
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sorbonne Université/CNRS, Paris, France
now at: Klima Consulting, Paris, France
Cameron Steer
Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sorbonne Université/CNRS, Paris, France
Nicolas Bellouin
Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sorbonne Université/CNRS, Paris, France
Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK
Olivier Boucher
Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sorbonne Université/CNRS, Paris, France
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Earth Syst. Dynam., 17, 387–414, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-17-387-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-17-387-2026, 2026
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Aviation impacts climate by forming contrails that trap heat and can persist for hours at cruising altitudes. Forecasting these humid regions is difficult, as satellites lack accuracy, aircraft data are limited, and ERA5 reanalysis has random errors. This study presents a hybrid machine learning method that corrects ERA5 with aircraft data, using decision trees in dry air and neural networks in humid air. It improves relative humidity predictions, especially in the lower stratosphere.
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Julie Carles, Nicolas Bellouin, Najda Villefranque, and Jean-Louis Dufresne
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Cirrus and contrails affect Earth’s energy balance with a lot of remaining uncertainty. The balance between solar and terrestrial radiation is delicate to calculate, and factors such as cloud optical depth, shape, and Sun position are crucial to estimate the effect of those clouds on radiation. Also, often neglected three-dimensional paths of radiation, or 3D effects, may be important to account for at the climatic scale.
John P. Dunne, Helene T. Hewitt, Julie M. Arblaster, Frédéric Bonou, Olivier Boucher, Tereza Cavazos, Beth Dingley, Paul J. Durack, Birgit Hassler, Martin Juckes, Tomoki Miyakawa, Matt Mizielinski, Vaishali Naik, Zebedee Nicholls, Eleanor O'Rourke, Robert Pincus, Benjamin M. Sanderson, Isla R. Simpson, and Karl E. Taylor
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Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5793–5836, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5793-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5793-2025, 2025
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Sauvik Santra, Shubha Verma, Shubham Patel, Olivier Boucher, and Mathew Koll Roxy
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2302, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2302, 2025
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Uneven spatial changes in Indian monsoon rainfall are linked to tiny airborne particles called aerosols, both human-made and natural (like dust). Using a high-resolution climate model, we show how persistent weakening and strengthening patterns in rainfall are driven by spatially varying aerosols. Reducing human-made aerosols may ease rainfall shortages in some areas but worsen excesses in others. These insights are key for better water management and policy planning.
Irina Melnikova, Philippe Ciais, Katsumasa Tanaka, Hideo Shiogama, Kaoru Tachiiri, Tokuta Yokohata, and Olivier Boucher
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 257–273, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-257-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-257-2025, 2025
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Reducing non-CO2 greenhouse gases is important alongside CO2 for climate mitigation. Here, we look at how reducing their emissions compares to reducing CO2 using an Earth system model. While both types of gases contribute to warming, their regional climate impacts differ. Besides, the carbon cycle responds differently depending on whether climate change is driven by CO2 or non-CO2 gases. Considering both types of gases is important for carbon cycle analysis and climate mitigation strategies.
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Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 157–181, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-157-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-157-2025, 2025
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ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis and airborne in situ observations from IAGOS are compared in terms of the representation of the contrail formation potential and the presence of supersaturation. Differences are traced back to biases in ERA5 relative humidity fields. Those biases are addressed by applying a quantile mapping technique that significantly improved contrail estimation based on post-processed ERA5 data.
Audran Borella, Olivier Boucher, Keith P. Shine, Marc Stettler, Katsumasa Tanaka, Roger Teoh, and Nicolas Bellouin
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 9401–9417, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-9401-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-9401-2024, 2024
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This work studies how to compare the climate impact of the CO2 emitted and contrails formed by a flight. This is applied to contrail avoidance strategies that would decrease climate impact of flights by changing the trajectory of aircraft to avoid persistent contrail formation, at the risk of increasing CO2 emissions. We find that different comparison methods lead to different quantification of the total climate impact of a flight but lead to similar decisions of whether to reroute an aircraft.
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Geoengineering indicates methods aiming to reduce the temperature of the planet by means of reflecting back a part of the incoming radiation before it reaches the surface or allowing more of the planetary radiation to escape into space. It aims to produce modelling experiments that are easy to reproduce and compare with different climate models, in order to understand the potential impacts of these techniques. Here we assess its past successes and failures and talk about its future.
Yann Quilcaille, Thomas Gasser, Philippe Ciais, and Olivier Boucher
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Yangxin Chen, Duoying Ji, Qian Zhang, John C. Moore, Olivier Boucher, Andy Jones, Thibaut Lurton, Michael J. Mills, Ulrike Niemeier, Roland Séférian, and Simone Tilmes
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 55–79, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-55-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-55-2023, 2023
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Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a way of counteracting the warming effects of increasing greenhouse gases by reflecting solar radiation. This work shows that solar geoengineering can slow down the northern-high-latitude permafrost degradation but cannot preserve the permafrost ecosystem as that under a climate of the same warming level without solar geoengineering.
Kevin Wolf, Nicolas Bellouin, and Olivier Boucher
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 287–309, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-287-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-287-2023, 2023
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Recent studies estimate the radiative impact of contrails to be similar to or larger than that of emitted CO2; thus, contrail mitigation might be an opportunity to reduce the climate effects of aviation. A radiosonde data set is analyzed in terms of the vertical distribution of potential contrails, contrail mitigation by flight altitude changes, and linkages with the tropopause and jet stream. The effect of prospective jet engine developments and alternative fuels are estimated.
Johannes Quaas, Hailing Jia, Chris Smith, Anna Lea Albright, Wenche Aas, Nicolas Bellouin, Olivier Boucher, Marie Doutriaux-Boucher, Piers M. Forster, Daniel Grosvenor, Stuart Jenkins, Zbigniew Klimont, Norman G. Loeb, Xiaoyan Ma, Vaishali Naik, Fabien Paulot, Philip Stier, Martin Wild, Gunnar Myhre, and Michael Schulz
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 12221–12239, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-12221-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-12221-2022, 2022
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Pollution particles cool climate and offset part of the global warming. However, they are washed out by rain and thus their effect responds quickly to changes in emissions. We show multiple datasets to demonstrate that aerosol emissions and their concentrations declined in many regions influenced by human emissions, as did the effects on clouds. Consequently, the cooling impact on the Earth energy budget became smaller. This change in trend implies a relative warming.
Sébastien Gardoll and Olivier Boucher
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Tropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most devastating natural disasters, which justifies monitoring and prediction in the context of a changing climate. In this study, we have adapted and tested a convolutional neural network (CNN) for the classification of reanalysis outputs (ERA5 and MERRA-2 labeled by HURDAT2) according to the presence or absence of TCs. We tested the impact of interpolation and of "mixing and matching" the training and test sets on the performance of the CNN.
Irina Melnikova, Olivier Boucher, Patricia Cadule, Katsumasa Tanaka, Thomas Gasser, Tomohiro Hajima, Yann Quilcaille, Hideo Shiogama, Roland Séférian, Kaoru Tachiiri, Nicolas Vuichard, Tokuta Yokohata, and Philippe Ciais
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 779–794, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-779-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-779-2022, 2022
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Simone Tilmes, Daniele Visioni, Andy Jones, James Haywood, Roland Séférian, Pierre Nabat, Olivier Boucher, Ewa Monica Bednarz, and Ulrike Niemeier
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 4557–4579, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-4557-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-4557-2022, 2022
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This study assesses the impacts of climate interventions, using stratospheric sulfate aerosol and solar dimming on stratospheric ozone, based on three Earth system models with interactive stratospheric chemistry. The climate interventions have been applied to a high emission (baseline) scenario in order to reach global surface temperatures of a medium emission scenario. We find significant increases and decreases in total column ozone, depending on regions and seasons.
Andy Jones, Jim M. Haywood, Adam A. Scaife, Olivier Boucher, Matthew Henry, Ben Kravitz, Thibaut Lurton, Pierre Nabat, Ulrike Niemeier, Roland Séférian, Simone Tilmes, and Daniele Visioni
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 2999–3016, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-2999-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-2999-2022, 2022
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Simulations by six Earth-system models of geoengineering by introducing sulfuric acid aerosols into the tropical stratosphere are compared. A robust impact on the northern wintertime North Atlantic Oscillation is found, exacerbating precipitation reduction over parts of southern Europe. In contrast, the models show no consistency with regard to impacts on the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, although results do indicate a risk that the oscillation could become locked into a permanent westerly phase.
Yves Balkanski, Rémy Bonnet, Olivier Boucher, Ramiro Checa-Garcia, and Jérôme Servonnat
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 11423–11435, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-11423-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-11423-2021, 2021
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Earth system models have persistent biases that impinge on our ability to make robust future regional predictions of precipitation. For the last 15 years, there has been little improvement in these biases. This work presents an accurate representation of dust absorption based upon observed dust mineralogical composition and size distribution. The striking result is that this more accurate representation improves tropical precipitations for climate models with too weak an African monsoon.
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Short summary
Targeted contrail avoidance consists of rerouting aircraft to minimise the formation of warming contrails. However, current predictions of contrail climate impact are highly uncertain. In this study, we show that some reroutings that were predicted to be beneficial for the climate are in fact damaging it. We further demonstrate that the risk of unintentionally damaging the climate can and should be included in the decision-making of contrail avoidance.
Targeted contrail avoidance consists of rerouting aircraft to minimise the formation of warming...