Airplane contrails are a tricky, and surprising, contributor to global warming

[Admin]

Commercial airplanes have made strides in reducing carbon emissions, but it turns out the exhaust clouds trailing behind them can have long-term impacts on the environment.

Airplane contrails are a tricky, and surprising, contributor to global warming : Read more

 

[COLGeek]

Not surprising at all. Post 9/11, when aircraft were grounded/severely limited, there were noticeable/measurable changes tracked then.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

It would have been nice if the article had described how contrails increase temperatures on the surface.

There seem to be a lot of competing effects, but clouds have generally been described as causing cooling on the surface by reflecting incoming solar radiation (sunlight) back into space without changing its wavelengths. Of course, they can also capture heat radiated from the earth's surface towards space and reradiate it back to the surface. We generally think of cloudy days as cooler than average and cloudy nights as warmer than average for those reasons.

Also, particulates in the stratosphere have been proposed to decrease global warming, but usually something like sulfuric acid, not carbon particles.

And, CO2 in the upper atmosphere has been modeled to decrease upper atmospheric temperatures, mostly due to CO2 migration there from the air below, not from jet contrails.

So, this article does not really do anything to explain how the net effect of contrails warms the planet's surface air. But, it needs to provide some explanation to attain credibility. With all of the doom-and-gloom biases in science reporting in the media these days, it needs to seem to make scientific sense to the lay person to have any effect on thinking in the general population.

And, including a "global warming" video that does not even mention the phenomena discussed in the article just makes it seem more likely to be propaganda than new scientific discovery.

If you want credibility, don't preach - do explain.

 

[Classical Motion]

“As a result, these thin cloud streaks have a greater impact on global warming than that of carbon emissions from combustion of jet fuel, according to the study.”

That’s quite a statement. How low do we need to fly so that only the combustion carbon emitted goes to global warming?

What’s the combustion/contrail ratio at 20,000 ft? Where’s the least of both?

Pilots will need faster response times for in flight control problems. Less drop time.