Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

[125gJoe]

Link: http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060124_earth_albedo.html

Just last week I watched a nice sunset. Too bad I didn't have the camera. It was one of those incredible sunsets with all the reds and orange tints in the "clouds"... it really was worthy of a few photos.

In a minute or two, I realized those were not natural clouds, but every one of the wind-blown "cloud-like" formations were jet contrails. I was hard to believe I was watching a photo worthy, man-made sunset.

I have heard time and time again that jet contrails dissipate. Well, it seems lots of times they don't just dissipate.






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[anonapersona]

I had read of a study a while back investigating the duration of contrails. They sent a jet up on a day favorable to making contrails and had it fly in a figure 8 to make an easy to track trail. Then they tracked it by satellite. They found that the contrail acted as a seed to form cloud cover. They suggested that the cloudy winter time weather in the north east may be due to jet contrails, as this could cover is worse in high air traffic areas.

Makes me wonder if "global warming" isn't perhaps just a greenhouse effect due to contrail induced cloud cover. (I also wonder if the "hole in the Ozone layer" has something to do with jet exhaust also.)

Guess I ought to read the linked article, in case I am way off topic.

[125gJoe]

...

Guess I ought to read the linked article, in case I am way off topic.It seems like you have answers. :thm:

And they make sense...



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[ceatwood]

After planes were grounded for a couple of days after 9/11, U.S. climatologists noted that the high temps for the day went up about one degree, and the lows went down by one degree, indicating that the contrail/seeding action was not only reflecting more sunlight back into space but also holding more between the earth and upper atmosphere. They are now waiting for another multi-day grounding of planes to see if the same thing happens again, let's just hope the next is a voluntary shut-down.

[125gJoe]

Again, today after a cold front (well, actually a Florida "cool front"), it's expected to be cloudless, and it wasn't. The contrails were all over the sky.



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