30 years of climate research on scheduled flights - Get updated on what's happening in tourism!

Over the past 30 years, the Lufthansa Group has collected important climate-relevant data for research on more than 35,000 regular passenger flights. Currently, up to three aircraft take off every day in the service of atmospheric and climate research. The next measurement flight will be Discover Airlines flight 4Y56 from Frankfurt to Orlando. The Airbus A330-300 with the registration D-AIKE is scheduled to take off today at 4:45 p.m. (LT) and will collect climate data continuously at an altitude of more than 10,000 meters over a distance of around 7,600 km in about 10 hours and 45 minutes. The Lufthansa Group has been a reliable partner for climate research since 1994. The company has continuously expanded its commitment to climate and weather research over the long term. The Lufthansa Group will continue to contribute to a better understanding of the climate in the future.

Over the last three decades, the Lufthansa Group, in collaboration with its research partners at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Jülich Research Center (FZJ), has equipped passenger aircraft in its fleet with scientific measuring instruments that collect information about the state of the atmosphere on regular scheduled flights. With these unique measurement data, scientists can refine existing climate models and improve weather forecasting models.

Grazia Vittadini, Chief Technology Officer Lufthansa Group, says:

“We are proud to have been able to make a significant contribution to climate research for 30 years. The further development of aviation is deeply rooted in the DNA of the Lufthansa Group, and it is our aspiration to play a leading role in the development of new technologies. It inspires me to see the passion and experience with which Lufthansa Group colleagues continuously discover new ways to advance research. Through our commitment, we are helping to sustainably improve climate models and weather forecasts. Scientifically sound findings are the basis for targeted measures on the path to more sustainable aviation.”

Starting signal 30 years ago: Lufthansa's commitment to climate research

Lufthansa's 100th Airbus aircraft entering service in 1994 marked the beginning of the company's commitment to climate research. The anniversary aircraft, an Airbus A340-300, was equipped with a compact measurement system for the MOZAIC research project (Measurement of Ozone, Water Vapor, Carbon Monoxide and Nitrogen Oxides by Airbus In-Service Aircraft). Together with another converted Airbus A340-300, Lufthansa collected measurement data for MOZAIC every day until 2014. The measurement flights were preceded by a preparation phase of about one year, during which the research partners installed the measuring instruments on the aircraft together with Airbus and Lufthansa.

About 300 organizations use the data collected by the Lufthansa Group

The Lufthansa Group has also been involved in the MOZAIC follow-up project IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System) from the very beginning. The world's first IAGOS system has been in use since 2011 in Lufthansa's Airbus A340-300 “Viersen”

(D-AIGT). In 2015, the second IAGOS system was installed at Lufthansa on another Airbus A330-300 (D-AIKO). The third IAGOS aircraft of the Lufthansa Group, also an Airbus A330-300 (D-AIKE), has been flying for Discover Airlines since 2022.

As a unique European research infrastructure, IAGOS, under the leadership of the Jülich Research Center, combines the expertise of partners from research, weather services, the aviation industry and airlines.

The data collected daily is automatically transmitted to the central database of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) research center in Toulouse after each flight. It is freely and openly accessible for global research and is currently used by around 300 organizations worldwide. They help researchers to gain new insights into climate development and the composition of the atmosphere, to identify long-term changes, to refine climate models and to improve weather forecasts.

Lufthansa Group research fleet is growing

For the flagship project IAGOS-CARIBIC (Civil Aircraft for the regular Investigation of the atmosphere Based on an Instrument Container), the Lufthansa Group, together with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, is currently converting the state-of-the-art Lufthansa long-haul Airbus A350-900 “D-AIXJ” (named “Erfurt”) into a flying research laboratory in a multi-year and globally unique project.

A measuring laboratory weighing a good two tonnes and specially developed for the project is currently being set up. Around 20 measuring instruments will be installed in the laboratory, which will later be installed in the cargo hold of the “Erfurt” on selected flights and connected to the air intake system on the outer fuselage of the aircraft via permanently installed pipes. At the end of 2025, this fully automated high-tech laboratory is scheduled to take off for the first time and, on selected flights in Lufthansa's worldwide scheduled operations, to measure more than 100 different trace gases, aerosol and cloud parameters from the ground up to the tropopause region at altitudes of nine to thirteen kilometers, in addition to passenger transportation. Between 2004 and March 2020, the Lufthansa Airbus A340-600 “Leverkusen” (D-AIHE) had already completed around 500 measurement flights for IAGOS-CARIBIC in the service of climate and atmospheric research.

With the combination of a flying measurement laboratory on the D-AIXJ and a total of ten aircraft in the IAGOS fleet, including three from the Lufthansa Group, IAGOS is tapping into an enormously valuable treasure trove of data for both long-term atmospheric observations and the elucidation of important atmospheric processes. The evaluation of the extensive measurement data has led to over 480 peer-reviewed scientific publications to date, including several articles in the high-ranking journals of Nature and PNAS since 2015. In 2014, the flying CARIBIC laboratory was able to make an important contribution to the detection of three previously undetected chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the main contributors to the so-called hole in the stratospheric ozone layer.

With the measurement data collected by the Lufthansa Group and other airlines, it has also been possible to build up a unique global database on the very important greenhouse gases water vapour and ozone across all the projects mentioned.

Continuous contribution to improving weather forecasts

A large part of the Lufthansa Group fleet is also equipped with the AMDAR system (Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay). This records important meteorological data measured by the aircraft, such as temperature and air pressure. These data are used, for example, by the German Meteorological Service (DWD) for the daily weather forecast. Since 2015, Lufthansa has also equipped nine Airbus A321 aircraft with a WVSS-II humidity sensor (Second-Generation Water Vapor Sensing System) and provides the DWD with additional data on water vapor content in the atmosphere, which is important for weather modeling.

Broad research commitment to avoid long-lasting contrails

A current research focus of the Lufthansa Group, together with partners from science and industry, is to better understand the effects of non-CO2 emissions from aviation and to develop countermeasures.

The Lufthansa Group is a partner in the research project D-KULT (Demonstrator Climate and Environmentally Friendly Air Transport), which is funded by the German government's aviation research program and coordinated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). At the same time, SWISS is actively involved in the European research project CICONIA (Climate effects reduced by Innovative Concept of Operations - Needs and Impacts Assessment). Among other things, these two coordinated projects are investigating how well areas with a high tendency to form climate-impacting contrails can be predicted and how this information can be incorporated into flight planning and air traffic management.

In this context, Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cargo are also participating in a test flight program together with other industry players as part of the D-KULT project. A prototype developed by Lufthansa Systems for climate-optimized flight planning is also being used.

Image Credit: © Lufthansa Group