Posted on 03/29/2011 9:40:47 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The long, feathery lines of condensation that form behind aircraft, called contrails, have more of an immediate warming effect on the Earth's surface than the carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases that the aircraft emit, a new study calculates.
However, the researchers add, contrail clouds disappear within a day or two; the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide lingers in the air for many years.
Contrails form when the hot, moist plume of exhaust generated by an airplane's engines mixes with cold air in the upper atmosphere. Liquid droplets form and then freeze, forming a straight, white line. Over the span of a few hours or more, the contrail loses its definition and becomes a wispy cirrus cloud. But if the atmosphere is very moist, the line shape can exist for days, said Ulrike Burkhardt, a researcher at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics ..
If there were no other clouds in the sky, contrail cirrus clouds would cover up to 10 percent of European skies and about 6 percent over the east coast of North America, another heavily trafficked region, they calculated. They disappeared from American skies briefly when nearly all airtraffic was grounded after the 9-11 attack. Some research has indicated that this resulted in more variation in temperatures, particularly warmer daytime temperatures.
...
Contrail clouds have another complex effect: They use up water vapor that normally could go into the formation of natural cirrus clouds, according to Kärcher and Burkhardt.
When all of these effects are considered, contrail clouds ultimately alter the Earth's energy budget in a way that warms it, by reducing the amount of energy that escapes back out into space, the team found. Greenhouse gases do the same thing, trapping energy that would otherwise escape into space and so warming the planet.
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(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
What about the effect of water vapor emitted by trees and other vegetation?
Ban lightning....
Nuke the gay whales for Islam !
Bunny huggers are money huggers seeking more junk science research funds.
My opinion.....stay safe.
"They disappeared from American skies briefly when nearly all airtraffic was grounded after the 9-11 attack. Some research has indicated that this resulted in more variation in temperatures, particularly warmer daytime temperatures."
So the presence of contrails results in global warming, but following 9/11, when they disappeared briefly (and for a statistically insignificant period), it resulted in higher daytime temperatures? Am I missing something?
Jet trails warm the earth? We ought to be able to think of a more efficient, less expensive way to heat the place than that.
Are we going to die again?
Carbon dioxide is in no way “potent”: in the real world as opposed to computer simulations, it has no effect whatsoever on air temperature, and that absence of causal relationship can be verified over millions of years in the past.
Carbon dioxide is in no way “potent”: in the real world as opposed to computer simulations, it has no effect whatsoever on air temperature, and that absence of causal relationship can be verified over millions of years in the past.
Do they still call it "climate change," or is there a new verbal sophistry?
And a new “scientific” study I heard about the other day “proves” that standing on one leg for an hour every other Tuesday at 3am, with tinfoil on your head, will result in 1 inch higher tides in Indonesia as well as a 25% increase in the Ladybug population. Go figure.
What A Load! Where’s the Barf Alert?
LOL
That was funny.
Say what?
George Noory should have this guy on CTC.
You are thinking of Chemtrails and not Contrails. Here is a little video of Chemtrails
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSSWnXQsgOU
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