Contrail Inventory

Contrails.org hosts APIs providing historical air traffic contrail impact information. These datasets are limited to historical flights. These endpoints provide a superset of data available through the Impact Explorer and are intended to provide a common dataset for research into contrail impacts and for airlines evaluating the impact of their operations.

The Inventory API provides the following endpoints:

  • v1/inventory/summary endpoint provides per-flight summary information about contrail impact, including CO2e and contrail length on a per-day request. This closely mimics the CSV export capabilitiy in the Impact Explorer.

  • v1/inventory/segments endpoint provides minute-segment impact information for global flights for a one-hour request window. This dataset is limited to partners with explicit redistribution access to our Spire ADS-B data, as for the ADS-B API.

Data Availability

The current contrail impact inventory dataset spans 2019 through 2025 global commercial flights. The dataset will eventually expand to include quarterly datasets roughly one quarter behind (e.g. Q2 should be released by end of Q3).

Inventory Summary Endpoint

Return per-flight summary information about contrail impact. Available on daily intervals including all daily flights beginning on the requested date.

Signature

GET /v1/inventory/summary?date={iso_date_string} HTTP/2

Host:

api.contrails.org

Headers:

x-api-key: {contrails-api-key}

Parameters:
iso_date_string

timezone naive ISO-compliant date string (e.g. 2023-01-01).

Response:

Content-Type: application/vnd.apache.parquet

Inventory Segments Endpoint

Return minute flight segment contrail impact data for all global flights within a one-hour window. Available on hourly intervals including all minutes within the requested hour.

Signature

GET /v1/inventory/segments?date={iso_date_string_with_hour} HTTP/2

Host:

api.contrails.org

Headers:

x-api-key: {contrails-api-key}

Parameters:
iso_date_string_with_hour

timezone naive ISO-compliant date string with hour (e.g. 2023-07-21T14).

Response:

Content-Type: application/vnd.apache.parquet