Half a ton of carbon dioxide for a trip to Southern Europe, or three tons for a trip to Thailand?

Now researchers at Chalmers have launched a page where you can easily see how much carbon dioxide emissions your holiday trip causes.

The site flightemissionmap.org was created by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, and is completely new, says Jörgen Larsson, a researcher specializing in sustainable consumption and air travel.

“We wanted to raise awareness that distance plays a role in how large the emissions are,” he says.

It is possible to see approximately how much emissions different travel destinations entail, from, for example, Oskarshamn or Umeå to different places. Stopovers are not yet included, but emissions are estimated using a standard formula.

But anyone who takes a look from Sweden out into the world will see that emissions within Europe remain at fairly modest levels. At least when compared to more distant places, such as Australia and New Zealand, which produce a whopping five and a half to six tons of emissions.

The conclusion we should draw is that longer trips result in greater emissions and it is not just due to the distance. The high altitude effect is also greater for long trips, says Jörgen Larsson.

– It is the water vapor that the plane emits at high altitude, above 8,000 meters, that acts as a kind of blanket. For domestic flights, it is not that great, only 10 to 20 percent of the Stockholm - Gothenburg route is at high altitude. To include the high-altitude effect, we have multiplied the carbon dioxide emissions by 1.9 in the model, but there are large uncertainties around these figures, says Jörgen Larsson.

<Källa.TT