Air traffic may increase cirrus cloudiness

Olivier Boucher ()
Additional contact information
Olivier Boucher: Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique, U.F.R. de Physique

Nature, 1999, vol. 397, issue 6714, 30-31

Abstract: Abstract High-level cirrus clouds can evolve1, 2 from the condensation trails of aircraft, which form as the mixture of warm, humid exhaust gases and colder, drier air exceeds water saturation3. In addition, the particles in exhaust plumes from aircraft may allow ice nucleation at lower supersaturations than those required under natural conditions4. This mechanism is sensitive to environmental conditions, but may occur downstream of the exhaust aerosol source regions. Here I show that cirrus clouds increased in occurrence and coverage in the main air-traffic flight corridors between 1982 and 1991.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/16169 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:397:y:1999:i:6714:d:10.1038_16169

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/16169

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().