Does air traffic affect our weather?
CrowdScience
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The Impact of Flight on Weather
Roger Timmies is a lead scientist for air quality research at the Environment Agency in England. He used historical witness accounts of huge contrail formations left by the many planes that formed the Allied bombing fleets during World War II. Roger was able to directly compare the weather under the plane made contrail clouds with the surrounding area. And what did he find? The rate of rise of temperature under the contrails was slower than the rate of rise elsewhere where there were no contrails. It seems contrails have two contradictory consequences. One cooling effect during the day, by stopping so much sun warming the earth and secondly they act like an insulating blanket that stops the land cooling down particularly at night.
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