Overview
Air Transport has for a long time been linked to environmental issues like pollution, noise and climate change. Aviation emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapour (H2O), nitrogen oxides (NOx), soot and sulphate aerosols, alter the concentration of atmospheric Greenhouse gases and trigger the formation of contrails and cirrus clouds. The share of aviation amongst all anthropogenic CO2 emissions is about 2% (ATAG).
However, studies estimate the climate impact from aviation for the year 2005 including non-CO2 emissions to roughly 5% of the total anthropogenic radiative forcing (Lee et al., 2010). Considering the projected growth of air traffic for the next decades of 5% (RPK) per year, aviation’s share of the total anthropogenic climate impact is expected to increase further. Consequently, intergovernmental organizations, aircraft manufacturers and operators and the research community are increasingly focusing on different technological, operational and regulatory climate impact mitigation options.
In this framework, ClimOP aims to identify, evaluate and support the implementation of mitigation strategies to initiate and foster operational improvements which reduce the climate impact of the aviation sector. Operational improvements correspond to any operational measure or action taken through time in order to improve the current provision of aviation operations. The overall objective of ClimOp is to define actions and advice for policymakers by proposing a set of most promising and harmonized mitigation strategies.