Friday, September 14, 2007

September's Science: Shutdown of airlines aided contrail studies



Week of May 11, 2002; Vol. 161, No. 19 , p. 291
"Immediately after four hijacked airliners slammed into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Federal Aviation Administration shut down all U.S. commercial air traffic for 3 days. The unprecedented grounding of airliners enabled airports to step up security measures. At the same time, scientists stepped up to a unique opportunity to study the influence of high-flying aircraft on Earth's climate."
clipped from www.sciencenews.org
a1656_1355.jpg

One way that aircraft may affect climate is through their cloud like contrails, which appear behind jets flying at high altitude. Contrails are made of ice crystals that form within seconds around the small particles present in aircraft exhaust
the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and the Northeast�areas of the country typically blanketed with aircraft contrails in mid-September�showed the largest changes in diurnal temperature range, mostly from increased daytime high temperatures. This bolsters the argument that contrails can significantly affect climate
Sept. 12, individual cloud trails of high-flying military aircraft stand out clearly in a nearly cloud-free region west of Washington, D.C. In just a few hours, six contrails�each of which started out a few meters wide�spread to cover more than 20,000 square kilometers.
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// posted by Unknown @ 7:49 a.m.
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