待翻譯：Google partners with the aviation industry to prevent climate-warming contrails with AI

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Google LLC today revealed it’s partnering with the U.K. government and the country’s aviation industry on a new initiative called Operation Blue Skies that aims to use artificial intelligence insights to reduce the impact of climate-warming contrails across an entire oceanic airspace. Contrails are the white clouds that sometimes form behind airplanes at cruising altitudes. They’re created when water vapor condenses around the soot and other emissions from the jet exhaust, and they’re extremely polluting, with some estimates claiming they account for around a third of the aviation industry’s total climate impact. They usually form during cold, yet humid atmospheric conditions, and sometimes they can linger and expand into cloud layers that retain heat. According to Google, the plan behind Operation Blue Skies is to use AI to try and identify contrail-sensitive regions of the atmosphere, based on data gathered from earlier trials. It will pinpoint these regions using a combination of satellite imagery and historical flight data, then correlate these findings with weather forecasts to predict areas where contrails are most likely to form. It will provide these forecasts to the U.K.’s National Air Traffic Services or NATS, enabling its air traffic controllers to steer pilots clear of the zones it has identified. The idea is that flight crews can make minor, targeted deviations to their flight paths to prevent the contrails from forming, without disrupting flight operations. NATS will be in charge of managing the airspace and controlling air traffic, as well as conducting safety assessments during the trial. Google technical lead Paul Hodgson said the trial will last for 30 months in total, with two four-month long operational periods when flights will actually be redirected to try and avoid contrails. The focus is on the Shanwick airspace within the eastern North Atlantic corridor, which spans the eastern half of the North Atlantic ocean. According to Google, this specific region is responsible for around 5% of all global contrail warming. During the designated test windows, the corridor is expected to see around 10,000 flights in total, and between 1% and 5% of them will be redirected to avoid contrail-forming regions, Hodgson said. While that may not seem like a lot, it will be enough to demonstrate if avoiding the most contrail-prone regions leads to a significant reduction in contrail formation. Google and NATS will be joined in the initiative by the U.K.’s Met Office, which is responsible for providing the weather forecasts, and Contrails.org, which will help to design the trial parameters and handle the data analysis. Researchers from the Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge will also participate in the project to independently verify its climate impact. Google said the program is expected to cost around £5 million (around $6.76 million). The U.K.’s Department of Transport will put up £2.65 million, while Google’s U.K. subsidiary, which is involved on a pro-bono basis, will contribute £1.4 million in the form of AI research, engineering time and computing resources. Hodgson said the hope is that Operation Blue Skies will be able to demonstrate that its operationally practical to solve the challenge of contrail warming and provide a validated blueprint for how to manage airspaces and reduce the aviation industry’s climate impact. Photo: TheOtherKev/Pixabay A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities. 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network Are you an AWS customer? Support SiliconANGLE financially by buying your AWS services from our Marketplace portal page and links: https://siliconangle.com/aws-marketplace/ About SiliconANGLE Media