BBC: Met Sat Images: How aircraft contrails form cloud

Please see time sequence

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8309629.stm

Related (and older) article in New Scientist:

www.newscientist.com/article/dn7796-plan...ifting-altitude.html

So we may have two problems - contrail-generated cirrus clouds contributing to global warming by trapping heat - and making life awkward for astronomers!

The Cloud Appreciation Society petitioned British Prime Minister on environmental issue - got a "not enough data - need to focus on what we know about" type resposne (there is an embedded link to pm.gov.uk)

cloudappreciationsociety.org/petition-against-contrails/

This is all new to me. The later two links there being a few years old - I was not ware that there was some believe that planes can cause cloud formation.

Mark

Mark, I can tell you categorically that they do.
I live in Shannon and it is very noticable on a clear day
the ammount of haze and later on cloud that planes cause.
The satellite images I have seen before and there is
even a famous one (that I can't find right now) of a photo
that was taken from the ISS that shows it better than that BBC link.

I'm not sure (maybe someone in the know will let us know)
but I wonder is there some marker that craft passing over Ireland from Europe
use at Shannon because there ALWAYS sees to be high alt planes over here.

After 9/11, there were a few days where there were no planes in the skies anywhere in the US, an exceptional opportunity for environmentalists.
One thing they immediately found was that daytime temperatuires were immediately 0.5c higher and nighttime temperatures were 0.5c colder. Contrails make a differance by trapping nighttime heat and reflecting daytime heat, contrails effective act like cloud cover.

Dave_Lillis wrote:

After 9/11, there were a few days where there were no planes in the skies anywhere in the US, an exceptional opportunity for environmentalists.

Photo of the day before September 11th 2009:



:ohmy:

Seanie.

Wha!?
That's insane!
Seanine,
is there a pic for 9/11?

Original article in Nature re theory of increasing temp due to contrails:
facstaff.uww.edu/travisd/pdf/jetcontrailsrecentresearch.pdf

Recent study arguing against this theory:
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/0...tudy_challenged.html