Regional and Seasonal Dependence of the Potential Contrail Cover and the Potential Contrail Cirrus Cover over Europe

Ambient weather conditions strongly impact contrail formation and persistence. The implementation of avoidance mitigation strategies, therefore, requires regional altitude-dependent information on the frequency occurrence. To this end, we have developed a method to quantify potential cover based 10 years high-resolution reanalysis climatology data from European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF). We use Schmidt–Appleman threshold temperature additionally select thresholds relative humidity evaluate occurrence persistent contrails assess their seasonal variation. find cirrus 10% 20% above Europe at higher altitudes 200 250 hPa in 10-year weak At lower altitudes, near 300 hPa, steep onset high is found late fall winter, decreasing 2% summer. In comparison ECMWF data, evaluations using National Centers Environmental Prediction (NCEP) show significantly cover. Our results help investigate altitude dependence particular warming nighttime that contribute total climate aviation.