Last month, the tech giant quietly changed its algorithm to eliminate a critical component
“Google «retouched» its pages contain a wealth of information about the aviation industry's impact on the climate,” Dr Doug Parr told the BBC.
The change, as Google announced in its publica post on Github last month was made after consulting with the tech giant's "academic and industry partners." Google also said it had decided to calculate only carbon dioxide emissions from flights, rather than the combined effect of all greenhouse gases, known as CO2E, or "carbon dioxide equivalents" in terms of climate. In particular, Google decided to temporarily abandon the calculations associated with contrails - clouds that form behind aircraft, which can have a large impact on emissions during flight.
While carbon dioxide is the largestpart of greenhouse gas emissions from flights, the exclusion of contrails that form when water vapor in jet fuel freezes, creating clouds that remain in the sky after flights, is curious. Clouds created by frozen jet steam can actually produce a temporary greenhouse effect by trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Warming effect from individual inversionstraces are rather short-lived, as the clouds disappear within a few hours. But given that there are thousands of flights in the sky at any given time - the US Federal Aviation Administration alone handles more than 45,000 flights daily - these "temporary" warming clouds can cause real damage.
Google says inversion calculationtrack for individual flights is too complex, and while it's worth it, they want to develop a mechanism to make more accurate predictions for specific flights.
“We strongly believe that the model shouldinclude effects other than CO2 emissions, but not at the expense of the accuracy of individual flight estimates,” a Google spokesperson said in an email to Earther. “To solve this problem, we are working closely with leading scientists on a study that will be published soon. It will help us better understand how the impact of contrails varies across critical factors such as time of day and region, which in turn will help us accurately reflect this information to consumers.”
However, some conclusions about the generalThe effects of air travel are scary: A 2011 analysis found that the warming effect of contrails may be greater than that of jet fuel itself. Another study predicted that the heating effect of contrails could triple by 2050 as air traffic continues to rise.
By making changes to the calculation of carbon emissions,Google may drastically lower its estimates for some flights. The BBC calculated that before the equation was changed, the instrument could show that a flight from Seattle to Paris emitted 1,070 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per person; after the shift it is only 521 kg CO2-eq.
Let us remind you that when last fallGoogle launched a carbon tracking tool that allows consumers to see the individual emissions created by each flight, and it has received widespread attention and praise from industry leaders and climate scientists alike.
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