Airlines Are Finally Getting Serious About Contrails. What Are They? Airplane contrail clouds, long the subject of conspiracy theories, are believed to be an environmental problem.
By Jonathan Small •
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What are those puffy white plumes trailing jets high up in the sky? They're called contrails, and scientists have long said they contribute to climate change.
Now some major airline companies are getting on board. Carries such as American, Southwest, United, Alaska, and Virgin Atlantic, and tech companies like Google, are working with the Rocky Mountain Institute to figure out which of these contrails are bad for the environment and what they can do about it.
"Air travel has almost a double-sized impact on global warming than what we thought it was before," said Andrew Chen, an aviation specialist with the Rocky Mountain Institute, told The Dallas Morning News. "The most interesting dynamic is that the airlines are not shying away from contrails."
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What are airplane contrails?
Conspiracies abound about how the lines of clouds following jets are "chemtrails" released by the government in a secret program to add toxic chemicals to the atmosphere.
But scientists say that these clouds are, in fact, water vapor trails or condensation trails (contrails, for short) created by airplane engines. The hot, humid exhaust mixes with the colder atmosphere, causing a cloud similar to what you see when you breathe on a cold day.
Climate scientists believe contrails can trap heat in the atmosphere contributing to global warming.
Carbon emissions from jets have long been the target of environmentalists, leading many airlines to retool their planes to use alternative energy. But the industry is now getting serious about contrail pollution, as well.
"The science around contrails has become more clear in just the last few years," said Jill Blickstein, vice president of sustainability at American Airlines told the DMN. "For example, we've known for some time that some contrails formed in the morning can have a cooling effect and that contrails formed at night were more likely to be warming. But we didn't have a good sense of the net impact of all contrails. That warming impact has become clearer recently."
Not all contrails have the same impact. The worst seems to happen at night when the earth is cooler, but the contrails block heat from escaping.
The good news is that airlines can avoid making contrails, but doing so may require changing flight patterns and burning more fuel, thus creating more carbon dioxide.
To read more about this, head on over The Dallas Morning News.
