What do contrails look like

The nature and persistence of jet contrails can be used to predict the weather. A thin, short-lived contrail indicates low-humidity air at high altitude, a sign of fair weather, whereas a thick, long-lasting contrail reflects humid air at high altitudes and can be an early indicator of a storm.

The mixing gases contained in the contrail rotate with respect to the ambient air. These regions of rotating flow are called vortices.

Any sharp surface, such as the tip of a wing, can cause vortical flow in its wake if it is sufficiently large or the flow is sufficiently fast. On occasion, these trailing vortices may interact with one another. In one well-known example of this fact, the Crow Instability causes the vortices to develop symmetric sinusoidal oscillations and eventually to merge and form vortex rings behind the jet.

This instability can be triggered by turbulence in the surrounding air or by local variation in air temperature or density, which may itself be the result of the stratification of the atmosphere. When the contrails are visible and strong, it is possible to see the white streaks become wavy and then leave rings floating high in the sky, like smoke rings from a giant cigar.

Recent research has suggested that the ice clouds contained in contrails cause greenhouse effects and contribute to global warming as part of the insulating blanket of moisture and gases in the atmosphere. Researchers in this area seized on the opportunity presented on September 11 and 12 over the U.

The contrail app should give the approximate location of the user on the ground and the approximate location of the possible contrail above. Using flight-tracking information available from various sources in the US, the app should be able to match the location on the ground with the approximate commercial flight location.

Note: This app will only use commercial air traffic data. Private or military jets are not included in this challenge. If a flight path reasonably matches the ground location, the ground observer can infer that the white lines are contrails.

Back to Aeronautics. Data Resources. Project teams from 11 locations solved Clouds or Contrails. Several scientific studies are being conducted with respect to contrail formation and their climatic effects. Last edited: Mar 14, The photos you will see here were captured Cumulus clouds are white, puffy clouds that look like pieces of floating cotton.

Especially as they fade away. Mar 14, 2 Here's one with an iPhone photo for comparison. It gives you a hint of how the world really should look like. Take a look at Skyvector. But aeroplanes are creating an increasing number of them and recent evidence has laid bare how damaging this is. What do they have to do with climate change? Remember that all of these things determine what a contrail will look like from the ground. Universe Today. Sometimes old contrails sometimes cannot be distinguished from these clouds.

Contrails, short for condensation trails, are the clouds that form in the wake of a passing aircraft at high altitude. Also known as a 'billow cloud,' a Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud looks like rolling ocean waves in the sky.

While there are many sizes and shapes, wall clouds that have strong updrafts can begin to rotation and may form tornadoes. I am no weather expert or meteorologist but have observed and photographed the sky a lot.

Image below: Contrails, to the right: Cirrus. Chemtrails CTs look like contrails initially, but are much thicker, extend across the sky and are often laid down in varying patterns of Xs, tick-tack-toe grids, cross-hatched and parallel lines. Persistent Spreading Contrails: These contrails form when a persistent contrail spreads out.

Most people have, at some point in their lives, lain on their backs and gazed up at the sky, scouting for clouds that look like puppies or leaping dolphins. Heavy contrail weather and Sun halo photo gallery. The streaky smears of cloud that criss-cross the sky in the wake of aeroplanes may look too wispy One study found that 57 per cent of the warming caused by aviation was due to contrails.

Short-lived contrails look like short white lines following along behind the plane, disappearing almost as fast as the airplane goes across the sky, perhaps lasting only a few minutes or less.

Instead of quickly dissipating, chemtrails expand and drip feathers and mare's tails. The contrails start spreading outward, eventually becoming a smokelike haze shrouding out the sunlight.