Accurate detection of aircraft contrails from satellite imagery is a valuable capability for studying one of the most impactful yet uncertain climate effects of aviation. In a recent study published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Irene Ortiz Abuja and co-authors critically assess the performance of state-of-the-art deep learning models trained on the OpenContrails dataset, with the aim of explaining the segmentation performance plateau widely reported in the...

The E-CONTRAIL project concluded on 30 November 2025 , after two years and a half of intense research since its launch in June 2023. We are extremely proud of the progress made in advancing the understanding of contrails and aviation-induced cloudiness , a major and still uncertain contributor to aviation’s non-CO₂ climate impact. Throughout the project, the consortium produced advanced AI detection tools, radiative forcing evaluations, and predictive models. These are key contributions that...

The E-CONTRAIL project participated yesterday in the EUROCONTROL Showcase Summit: Smart Sustainable Skies , hosted at EUROCONTROL Headquarters in Brussels. The event brought together aviation stakeholders committed to advancing climate-aligned operations, offering the perfect setting to present the project’s latest developments. During the Summit, the E-CONTRAIL team showcased the Policy Brief “Making Contrails Visible”  and demonstrated the interactive E-CONTRAIL Dashboard , which translates...