Estimating Global Aviation CO2 Emissions with Comprehensive Flight Data

Aviation is a challenging sector to tackle regarding CO2 emissions. Understanding what causes emission differences between flights is not clear, which makes it harder to create effective ways to reduce these emissions. By analyzing a detailed dataset from Flightradar24, we studied aviation’s global CO2 emissions and what causes changes in emissions between flights with high precision.

• Emission Figures: In 2019, 2020, and 2021, the CO2 emissions were 965, 528, and 617 Tg respectively.
• Flight Analysis: We looked at 153 million flights and found that the type of aircraft, how far the flight is, and how long it takes are all closely related to how much CO2 a flight emits.
• Emission Model: We created a model for 264 types of aircraft that can quickly estimate emissions and explain 99.4% of the changes in flight emissions.
• Reduction Strategies: By planning airport schedules and flight routes better, we could reduce emissions by up to 20% during the taxiing part of flights.

Our work highlights the importance of using real flight paths to measure CO2 emissions. This information is crucial for making specific plans to cut down on aviation emissions.