Can aircraft trails affect climate?

Nature News ^ | 31 December 2008 | Anna Barnett

[SuperLuminal]

Geez! Been hearing contrail crapola since the early 60's.

Who cares? After the 2nd arrival of Apophis it won't matter anyway.

[TigersEye]

There is a big group that think that all the contrails are really chemtrails, put out to alter our minds, kill us, or whatever. I guess that passenger planes don’t make any of that smoke, hahaha

LOL Must be pretty slow acting.

Contrails aren't even smoke they're water vapor FWIW.

[TigersEye]

I don’t know how I missed it. I’ve seen tons of shows on Sasquatch, UFOs, alien abductions ... I’ve even heard about chupacabras. Chemtrails must have gotten lost in the cosmic debris.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem for the topic. "Black helicopters" ping.

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[bigheadfred]

I wonder how she "edutained" children about global warming?

Better check their bodies for cigarette burns...

[gleeaikin]

I don’t know about chem trails, but there was a PBS special report on the phenomena after the three days absence of air travel with 9/11. The evidence the fascinated me was that evaporative pans used by agricultural scientists to track the water needs of farmers showed an unusually high level of evaporation during those 3 days. I had always thought that evaporation was caused by heat, but according to this program it was the increase of photons, because of the clear atmosphere, hitting the water that caused the extra evaporation. If I remember correctly it was also reported that the dirty air from Europe was implicated in the terrible Sahel drought in Africa. Since Europe has been cleaning up its skies there has not been such severe drought in Africa. There is more particulate pollution coming from China that actually reaches our continent. This may change with the worldwide economic slowdown.

Let us consider some of the implications. What influence might any of this have on hurricane strength since the conditions that develop them originate in Africa? What might be the influence on American agriculture, or droughts, or forest fires? So many questions, so complicated answers.

[TigersEye]

So many speculations. There is only one constant in weather and climate and that is change. Man is a part of the whole but at our most determined we’re still an insignificant factor.

[rdl6989]

Paging Art Bell was my first thought when I saw the title.

[Entrepreneur]

Research led by Gang Hong, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station, now suggests that this hypothesis is wrong3. Examining patterns of cloud cover and temperature in early September at US weather stations from 1971 to 2001, Hong and his colleagues found that thicker, low clouds are the dominant influence on temperature extremes, whereas high clouds such as contrails have a minor effect at most. They add that the 2001 temperature swings seem to be within the range of natural variability over those decades.

[AlexW]

“Contrails aren’t even smoke they’re water vapor FWIW.”

Of course I know contrails are condensed water vapor.
Thats why they are called CONtrails.
I used “smoke” as a joke.

It is amazing how many kooks really believe the skies are being crisscrossed by thousands of planes spewing chemicals on us.

[bigheadfred]

It is amazing how many kooks really believe the skies are being crisscrossed by thousands of planes spewing chemicals on us.

Not to mention the DANGER to the livestock!!!!

AHHHH!! LOOKOUT!!!