Aircraft contrails reduce solar irradiance

Aircraft Contrails Factsheet

1EPA 2Printed on paper that contains at least 30 percent postconsumer fiber. 1 This fact sheet focuses on contrails produced by aircraft engine exhaust. However, the term " contrail " is also used to refer to the short trails sometimes briefly appearing over aircraft wings or engine propellers, especially under mild, humid conditions. These contrails consist entirely of atmospheric water that c...

Do supersonic aircraft avoid contrails?

The impact of a potential future fleet of supersonic aircraft on contrail coverage and contrail radiative forcing is investigated by means of simulations with the general circulation model ECHAM4.L39(DLR) including a contrail parameterization. The model simulations consider air traffic inventories of a subsonic fleet and of a combined fleet of suband supersonic aircraft for the years 2025 and 2...

Contrails reduce daily temperature range.

The potential of condensation trails (contrails) from jet aircraft to affect regional-scale surface temperatures has been debated for years, but was difficult to verify until an opportunity arose as a result of the three-day grounding of all commercial aircraft in the United States in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Here we show that there was an anomalous increase ...

Solar irradiance

The UV-A and visible solar irradiance spectrum: inter-comparison of absolutely calibrated, spectrally medium resolution solar irradiance spectra from balloonand satellite-borne measurements W. Gurlit, H. Bösch , H. Bovensmann, J. P. Burrows, A. Butz, C. Camy-Peyret, M. Dorf, K. Gerilowski, A. Lindner, S. Noël, U. Platt, F. Weidner, and K. Pfeilsticker Institut für Umweltphysik und Fernerkundung...

Solar Irradiance Conversion Models*