COVID 19 - Reduced Air Traffic due to Coronavirus, Environmental Impacts

尽管航空业只产生了2.5%的二氧化碳排放，但它至少对人类气候造成了5%的影响。一个关键的驱动因素是轨迹，它通过在对流层中捕获热量产生了特别大的影响。然而，由于研究轨迹的困难，人们对它们的影响知之甚少，特别是在轨迹展开成巨大的、长期存在的卷云的情况下。由于大流行导致的航空数量空前减少，这使得我们能够使用卫星数据来隔离和跟踪个别轨迹，这通常是非常具有挑战性的。大流行期间相对晴朗的天空也使我们能够更好地估计航空影响，方法是将关闭期间的空域和尾迹形成与正常情况进行比较。此外，随着大流行的消退，英国政府面临着一个独特而紧迫的机会，以经济和环境友好的方式支持航空--特别是在希思罗机场第三条跑道等有争议的决定的背景下。该项目将使用独特的数据源对航空业的环境影响，特别是尾迹进行尖端研究，使政府能够在该行业未来恢复飞行运营时，就该行业的财务和监管支持做出基于证据的决策。

The aviation industry is responsible for at least 5% human climate impact, despite producing only 2.5% of CO2 emissions. A key driver of this is contrails, which have a particularly large effect by trapping heat in the troposphere.However, their impact is poorly understood due to difficulties in studying contrails, especially for situations where contrails spread out into large, long-lived, cirrus clouds. The unprecedented reduction in aviation due to the pandemic allows us to isolate and track individual contrails using satellite data, which is usually very challenging. The relatively clear skies during the pandemic also enable us to much better estimate the impact of aviation by comparing airspace and contrail formation during the shutdown against normal conditions.Furthermore, as the pandemic subsides there is a unique and urgent opportunity for the UK government to support aviation in an economically and environmentally friendly manner - especially in the context of controversial decisions such as Heathrow's third runway. This project will use unique data sources to conduct cutting-edge research into aviation's environmental impact, contrails in particular, to allow the government to make evidence-based decisions on financial and regulatory support to the industry as it returns to flight operations in the future.