This project aims to develop affordable laboratory experiments and models to better understand how airplane exhaust forms contrail clouds and how cleaner fuels might reduce them.
Commercial aviation contributes significantly to climate change, with roughly half of its impact arising from non-CO₂ effects such as contrail clouds. Contrails form when hot jet exhaust mixes with cold upper-atmosphere air, causing ice crystals to nucleate on engine-emitted particles. These contrail-induced clouds can trap heat and contribute to global warming. However, in-flight experiments to study contrail formation are rare and costly, and recent cancellations of planned flight campaigns have limited opportunities to test new fuels that may reduce contrails. This project will develop cost-effective laboratory experiments and computational tools to study ice nucleation under conditions relevant to contrail formation. The team will (i) model flow conditions within an existing ice nucleation chamber, (ii) modify the facility to better replicate the supercooled environment behind aircraft engines at cruising altitude, and (iii) generate soot particles from conventional jet fuel and sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) to evaluate differences in their ability to form ice. Together, these efforts will create scalable experimental and modeling capabilities to advance understanding of contrail formation and support strategies to reduce aviation’s climate impact.
