Contrail Observation Limitations Using Geostationary Satellites

Details

• Creators:
  Euchenhofer, Marlene V. ; Prashanth, Prakash ; Parke, Sydney A. ; Eastham, Sebastian D. ; Waitz, Ian A.
• Corporate Creators:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels and Environment ; Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. Office of Environment and Energy
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Aircraft Aircraft Exhaust Gases ASCENT Climate Geostationary Satellites Navigational Satellites
• Publication/ Report Number:
  2025GL118386
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118386
• Resource Type:
  Journal Article
• Right Statement:
  Open Access; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Wiley Periodicals LLC
• Abstract:
  Contrails are a significant contributor to aviation's climate impact with an effective radiative forcing similar to that from aviation's CO2 emissions, yet large uncertainties remain. Many observational contrail studies rely on data from a single sensor, in recent years increasingly from a geostationary imager, accepting lower spatial resolution in exchange for higher temporal and spatial coverage. However, the ability of geostationary imagery to resolve contrails has not been systematically characterized. By comparing higher spatial resolution low Earth orbit satellite imagery from Visual Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) to geostationary satellite imagery from GOES ABI, we show that the latter does not resolve 80% of the contrails nor half of the total length compared to contrails identified with VIIRS. Our findings underscore the need for multi‐sensor approaches to collect observational contrail data for improved validation of climate models and to enable more rigorous and verifiable contrail avoidance strategies.
• Content Notes:
  This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Please cite this article as: Euchenhofer, M. V., Prashanth, P., Parke, S. A., Eastham, S. D., & Waitz, I. A. (2025). Contrail observation limitations using geostationary satellites. Geophysical Research Letters, 52, e2025GL118386. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118386
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  13-C-AJFE-MIT-086
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:9b8a7b38ada96c2c1bd48ab736d09b001ddf91d502e75833f9eff17619ec9d1450660a5ba5a47796f731baa1149e29825452fff4fa8e5322650bfd8416c7fc62
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/89725/dot_89725_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.40 MB ]