{"id":12188,"date":"2026-05-13T13:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reuniwatt.com\/en\/?p=12188"},"modified":"2026-05-22T14:11:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T12:11:17","slug":"contrails-climate-and-ai-driven-observation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reuniwatt.com\/en\/company-news\/contrails-climate-and-ai-driven-observation\/","title":{"rendered":"[Webinar Series] CONTRAILS, Climate, and AI-Driven Observation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[Webinar Series] CONTRAILS, Climate, and AI-Driven Observation: Research Insights and Future Directions<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>
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\"Contrails<\/p>\n

The formation, persistence, and radiative impact of contrails depend on a complex interplay of atmospheric conditions, aviation operations, and cloud microphysics. The CONTRAILS project aims to provide tools to monitor the impact of contrails on climate. This webinar concludes the CONTRAILS project – a joint work of the German Weather Service DWD (DE), Thales Research & Technology (FR), Reuniwatt SAS (FR) and Laboratoire Atmosph\u00e8res, Milieux, Observations Spatiales LATMOS (FR) – and situates its scientific results within the broader European contrails research and development landscape. It brings together project partners and experts to review key outcomes of CONTRAILS, discuss methodological advances, and highlight how ongoing and upcoming initiatives are building on these results.<\/p>\n

In this webinar, speakers from Reuniwatt, Thales, and LATMOS will present the final scientific and technical results of the project, with a particular focus on observation strategies and AI-driven analysis methods. The session will show how visible and infrared all-sky imagers, lidar observations, and satellite-based cloud measurements can be used together to capture contrail occurrence, altitude, dynamics, and evolution. It will also explain how AI methods support contrail detection, clustering, stereoscopic reconstruction, dynamics prediction, and the linkage between observations and physical models.<\/p>\n

The session will open with an overview of European contrails research, positioning CONTRAILS within the wider ecosystem of national and international projects. This introduction will be followed by in-depth presentations of the project\u2019s scientific work, before opening the discussion to the broader contrails community.<\/p>\n

LATMOS will present the atmospheric and climate-science perspective, including the role of lidar measurements, satellite observations, and radiative-impact analysis. Particular attention will be given to how lidar can provide vertical information on cirrus and contrail-related cloud structures, and how satellite observations such as IASI and CALIPSO can support the evaluation of contrail radiative forcing and the validation of model parameterisations.<\/p>\n

Thales will present advances in AI methods for contrail identification and dynamics prediction, including approaches based on geometric deep learning and physics-informed AI. These methods are designed to process fisheye sky-imager data more naturally, improve robustness against image distortion, and combine data-driven learning with physical knowledge. This part of the webinar will address how AI can move beyond simple image recognition toward the interpretation of contrail formation, motion, persistence, and potential climate relevance.<\/p>\n

Finally, the webinar will highlight Reuniwatt\u2019s contribution to the deployment and use of all-sky imaging technologies for contrail monitoring, including data acquisition, calibration, annotation, and the creation of datasets suitable for AI-based processing. It will also cover the use of visible and infrared imagery for the analysis of contrail structures and stereoscopic observation approaches, extending all-sky camera methods from cloud monitoring toward contrail-specific climate research.<\/p>\n

The session will be chaired by Teodora Petrisor<\/strong>, who will provide an overview of the European contrails R&D landscape and position the CONTRAILS project within ongoing research on aviation\u2019s non-CO\u2082 climate effects. She will introduce the project\u2019s objectives, scope, and the methodological link between observation, AI-based analysis, physical modelling, and climate-impact assessment.<\/p>\n

Philippe Keckhut<\/strong> will present the LATMOS contribution to the project, focusing on the atmospheric-science perspective, lidar-based cloud observations, satellite data, and the interpretation of contrails within cirrus-cloud systems.<\/p>\n

Davide Di Giusto<\/strong> and Sol\u00e8ne Blasco-Lopez<\/strong> will present Thales\u2019 work on AI-based contrail identification and dynamics prediction, including the use of image analysis and learning algorithms to detect contrails and follow their evolution from ground-based observations. This part will explain how AI can help transform complex sky-imager data into operationally meaningful information for contrail monitoring, and how these methods aim to improve robustness, interpretability, and the coupling between data-driven learning and physical atmospheric models.<\/p>\n

Olivier Liandrat<\/strong> will present Reuniwatt\u2019s contribution to contrail observation technologies, with a focus on visible and infrared all-sky imagers, observation campaigns, calibration, data acquisition, and stereoscopic approaches. His contribution will show how ground-based imaging supports the creation of annotated datasets and the validation of AI-based contrail analysis.<\/p>\n<\/div>

After this webinar, you will have a better understanding of:<\/h3>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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