Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect of
contrail cirrus for years-in fact, there's an entire niche field of research devoted to it.
Sara Qureshi, co-founder of Aero Engine Craft, has done PhD in Aerospace from the UK and now she is working on a start-up to address the global climate change issue arising out of
contrail of airplanes.
Contrails were largely ignored in the decades following.
Researchers are most interested in persistent
contrails because they create long-lasting, and sometimes extensive, clouds that would not normally form in the atmosphere, and are believed to be a factor in influencing Earth's environment.
Minnis, 2012: Physical and optical properties of persistent
contrails: Climatology and interpretation.
In order to overcome the limitations of manual detection methods for
contrails, researchers attempted to develop automatic algorithms to detect
contrails depending on satellite imagery.
Contrails are clouds formed when water vapour condenses and freezes around small particles (aerosols) that exist in aircraft exhaust.
Air chemist Dr Gavin Phillips, of the University of Chester, said: "The long, thin clouds, or
contrails, that form behind aircraft are caused by water vapour in the jet engine exhaust condensing as ice in cold air.
"There were no wings, no audible sound, no propellers, no finnedempennage, no smoke, no
contrails. "My best guesstimate is that they were at an altitude of 8 kilometres, around 3 to 4.5 metres in length each."
In aeronautics,
contrails are better known as what?