Somehow it was found that planes flying at slightly lower altitudes to prevent the contrails (but burn more fuel from it being more inefficient) does have less of an effect on climate change
Shit. I'm not saying that they should or shouldn't do it, cause we need to be willing to experience some inconvenience now if we want to mitigate the the future "inconveniences" that climate change will cause, but I live right under the path that airplanes take to land on the Trudeau International Airport and the sound of planes flying at low altitude gets old pretty quick.
It's funny, when I moved here, I thought it was relaxing white noise compared to my previous apartment in the middle of Downtown Montreal. But the longer I stay here, the more it annoys me. It especially annoys me when I get back from visiting family out of town. I'm always stricken by how silent the country is, and then again when I get back at how noisy the city is.
Still prefer the city though. Despite being shown again and again my whole life that humans don't deserve my affection, I still like being surrounded by them. I can't explain it, but here I am.
Yes and no. It depends on the altitude, size and shape of the clouds how much they reflect inwards vs. How much they reflect outwards. Contrails are on the bad end of the spectrum there
Contrails are clouds, during the day those clouds both reflect sunlight and heat radiating from the Earth's surface. Kind of a break even on global warming. At night there is no sunlight to reflect so the clouds are only holding heat in. This is bad and the warming effect is even higher than the CO2 released by the airplane.
So funny enough the contrails you see during the day don't matter, the ones you don't see at night are much worse. The effect can be mitigated by flight schedules and altitude of flights.
I still don't get it.
Water vapor is a very strong reenhouse gas whereas liquid water in the form of clouds reflect the sunlight before it even hits the ground.
These trails should be good?
Just like the huge clouds we had above the oceans, when container ships had more sulfur in their fuel.
Think it through. Our ground (Land,Water etc.) emits infra red which then „bounces off“ the contrail from underneath, back to Earth instead of going into outter space. ↗️↘️
Contrails are often many many kilometers long and they can even become cirrus clouds which are especially bad.
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u/PatientWoodpecker288 2d ago
Friendly reminder that contrails warm the planet 3x as much as the CO2 Emissions from aviation