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Science

Contrails Affect Weather 39

Posted by michael from the button-up-your-overcoat dept.
TheSync writes "Wired News has a story about how contrails may influence the weather. The grounding of commercial flight operations after the 9/11 attack gave scientists a unique opportunity to compare weather with and without contrail-producing flight operations. Day/night temperature differences rose 3 degrees Celsius in some areas."
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Contrails Affect Weather More

Contrails Affect Weather

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  • News at 11.

    Could this mean that burning through all that fossil fuel is actually helping to cool the earth?

    I suggest we fly more airplanes to counteract the damage to the atmosphere that we are causing with our SUVs.

  • Duplicate article? (Score:2, Informative)

    by questionlp ( 58365 )
    This is a duplicate article... the first one was posted earlier today, here [slashdot.org].

  • RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Elias Israel ( 182882 ) <eli@promanage-inc.com> on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @11:13PM (#3527628)

    Yes, it's the ever-present /. cliche. The summary appears to have been written without reference to the underlying article.

    This statement:

    Day/night temperature differences rose 3 degrees Celsius in some areas...

    is completely backwards

    From the article

    A team of climatologists presented their work Tuesday, showing that temperatures in the United States fluctuated by 1.2 degrees Celsius more when airplanes were grounded than when normal flight patterns prevailed. That is, planes in the sky dampen the variability between day and nighttime temperatures. More air travel, the researchers suggest,
    brings less meteorological difference between noon and midnight.

    Now, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing can certainly be debated, and I expect the very next post in this topic to come from some hopelessly silly GreenPeace activist admonishing us all to stop flying in planes and start hugging dolphins.

    But at least let's start the discussion by actually reading the article first.

    • Not to mention that the poster doesn't read slashdot either, since this same story was already posted earlier today.
    • So what is supposed to be your point? The statement is not "completely backwards", it does infact summarize (part of) the article.
  • ... that another researcher tracked (using satellite images) how contrails of military aircraft (the only aircraft flying for those three days) grew from the width of an airplane wing "in a matter of hours into cloud banks that covered 20,000 square kilometers." It hardly seems possible for that to happen in a matter of hours.

    After reading this, I wish I'd have thought to look up at the skies back then and pay more attention to the weather, though I guess we all had more important concerns.

  • What wasn't mentioned was a control. Did they monitor temperatures on another set of days before or after the experiement. I wouldn't be surprised if the temperature fluctuation was naturally occurring (there might have been a 1.2C change between May 13th and today).
    • they had a control, temperature data dateing back 100 years or so. the weather service keeps track of all the temps for a day on record, so what theses guys are saying, is that there seemed to be greater change in those days, then the average on recent record.

      i am curious though, there was a lot of dust and stuff kicked up when the towers went down, how did that affect weather paterns in the area?
      • how did that affect weather paterns in the area?

        Heavy showers of masonry and burning people moving to generally dusty in the afternoon, the evening will bring a deep desire for revenge and general bloodletting.

        Over the next few days a general disbelief with scattered crying.

        Next seven days : back breaking toil accompanied by horrific scenes of carnage.

  • hunh (Score:2)

    by tps12 ( 105590 )
    It seems like everything affects the weather these days. Time to go burn some leaves.

  • Well, great, I Say! (Score:3, Funny)

    by aozilla ( 133143 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2002 @11:33PM (#3527684) Homepage

    Because that should really decrease the load on the butterflies.

  • I remember the aussis doing a study about this a year ago. Anyone know/remember anything?

  • Come on editors (Score:2, Informative)

    by n-baxley ( 103975 )
    Can you guys not use your own search engine before posting an article. Hell, all of my original submissions have been rejected, maybe I should try a duplicate story!

  • Is this a good study even? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I question this study because I don't know if that's nearly enough data to work on. You'd need a lot longer than a few days of grounded air traffic to test this theory, in my opinion.
  • That is, the first time I've ever seen a duplicate article while the other one is still on the front page.

    There's only one article's separation between the two for goodness sakes.

    I really, sincerely, honestly hope that VA is not actually *paying* michael or timothy for this level of editorial attention.

    Some might suggest that doing so goes against VA's fiduciary duties.
  • OK I see the duplicate story but what the hell happened to the story on Hotmail changing user's prefs? It was at the top(approx. 11:30Eastern, May 16, '02) and then it disappeared!

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