How Bad is Flying for the Planet?
CrowdScience
00:00
The Effects of Vapor Trails in the Sky
In the contrail, we get contrails when ice crystals form around the soot and aerosol particles emitted from the aircraft engine. At flying altitude, the atmosphere is very cold, around minus 30 or minus forty degrees celsius. These vapor trails have a very unusual characteristic in that they form at very high titude - similar to where high clouds form. They would typically be expected to cause a net warming effect. But they also are very dense and bright, especially initially upon their formation. And that causes somewhat a reflective property. To research this further, we're going to need some pretty special conditions. Our listener, neil, had a thought. It was that icelandic volcano
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