ATM impact on climate change

Funded projects will:

• Significantly advance understanding of ATM’s climate impacts, including CO₂ and non-CO₂ emissions, noise and air quality pollutants, contrails and embedded contrails;

• Provide objective, timely and credible technical advice through coordinated ANCEN engagement to inform European and international aviation climate policy development and implementation;

• Deliver multi-scale modelling tools, metrics and operational proxies that quantify environmental and climate impacts of current and future air traffic and new entrants, supporting robust decision-making by ANSPs, Network Manager, airports, airlines, and U-space/drone operators;

• Enhance ATM system climate resilience and adaptation by modelling extreme weather trends and hazards under climate change, informing short- and long-term adaptation strategies without compromising network sustainability;

• Enable integrated nowcasting/forecasting platforms for multiple atmospheric hazards, improving situational awareness, capacity, efficiency, safety and predictability for ATM/U-space stakeholders;

• Improve contrail detection, prediction and climate effect quantification, reducing uncertainty and informing operational mitigation measures;

• Foster an ecosystem of shared results, open tools and standardised metrics under FRAND conditions, accelerating innovation and avoiding duplication across SESAR, Clean Aviation, EASA and related initiatives.

Proposals must:

• Address the FR-1 “ATM impact on climate change” development priority and consider both CO₂ and non-CO₂ effects;

• Coordinate non-CO₂ impact research with the Aviation Non-CO₂ Expert Network (ANCEN) and contribute to its community work;

• Deliver state-of-the-art reviews and explicitly address knowledge gaps identified by ICAO CAEP, EASA EAER 2022 and EASA SC Annual Report 2023;

• Consider new propulsion types, aircraft configurations and fuels, referencing Clean Aviation programme findings;

• Cover all flight phases (strategic planning to post-operations) and leverage AI/deep learning methods where relevant;

• Integrate global/regional and local scales for pollutant transport and radiative effects;

• Include social acceptance, trade-off analyses and potential network re-shaping impacts for new entrants (drones, HAO, supersonic, space vehicles);

• Coordinate with ongoing related projects and stakeholders (SESAR 3, EASA, ANCEN, Clean Aviation, AEROPLANE, CREATE, CLAIM, ALARM, KAIROS);

• Provide decision-making support tailored to ANSPs, airports, Network Manager, airlines, U-space/drone operators;

• Adhere to lump-sum funding rules, a maximum 30-month duration (including 6-month dissemination/exploitation period) and application form requirements.