"March winds bring April jet contrails crisscrossing the sky, say meteorologists who have figured out where, when and why the sun-blocking, regionally climate-warming outbreaks happen across the United States.
By studying years of satellite views of contrail outbreaks and sorting out the conditions and the locales where they are most likely, the rhyme and reason of the human-made, high-altitude cirrus clouds are beginning to come into focus.
One of the least surprising discoveries is that the outbreaks tend to favor places with lots of air travel. But that alone does not explain why some days there are no contrails and on others, particularly days in April and October, the skies can be infested with the white lines."
March winds bring April jet contrails crisscrossing the sky, say meteorologists who have figured out where, when and why the sun-blocking, regionally climate-warming outbreaks happen across the United States. By studying years of satellite views of contrail outbreaks and sorting out the conditions and the locales where they are most likely, the rhyme and reason of the human-made, high-altitude cirrus clouds are beginning to come into focus. One of the least surprising discoveries is that the outbreaks tend to favor places with lots of air travel. But that alone does not explain why some days there are no contrails and on others, particularly days in April and October, the skies can be infested with the white lines.
"They tend to heat the upper troposphere more than they warm the surface," explained Patrick Minnis of NASA's Langley Research Center. "The debate now is whether the warming is larger than the albedo."
contrail forecasting tool |
clipped from dsc.discovery.com
