Contrail Science

Well, it looks like the cat is out the bag. The secret government has slipped up and allowed the release of a History Channel special that spills the beans on the whole Chemtrail program!

Several clips from this show are available on youtube:

The unfortunate thing about the show is that, regarding “chemtrails” it’s all theory and zero facts. Far from “validating” any chemtrail theory, the show simply repeats the theory.   What’s more it’s basically just a platform for William Thomas to repeat the same nonsense he’s been spouting for the last ten years, totally ignoring both science and common sense. For Example:

Thomas: I think most of us in North America have been wondering about these plumes criss-crossing the sky in grid patterns, rows, and the now-familiar X’s, and many of us have wondered what these trails are.

Well, actually no – most people don’t wonder what these plumes are. And for those that do, we know EXACTLY what they are. They are contrails. This has been explained time and time again, with vast amounts of scientific and historical evidence behind the explanation. What evidence does Thomas give? None. Zero. Zip. Nada.
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Not a contrail, but a nice image:

A U.S. Air Force AC-130 Gunship aircraft executes an evasive maneuver and drops chaff and flares during a firepower demonstration at the Nevada Test and Training Range in Nevada on Sept. 14, 2007.

http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/newsphoto.aspx?newsphotoid=9540

I don’t know if you can actually see the chaff. I suspect that’s all just smoke from the flares. I suspect that when they are released simultaneously then it’s as a countermeasure for incoming missiles, and so will be very short-lived, a few seconds at most.

I’ve never actually seen a photo of modern chaff being dispensed. Is such at thing even possible to photograph? I’d be grateful if someone could point me at a photo of chaff.

Okay, it’s not actually a contrail.   But it’s a related phenomenon – a plume of hot humid air is rising from a volcano, and where it hits the cold upper air, the water vapor it contains condenses out.  Possibly into ice, but it’s hard to tell.

The brown clouds are volcanic ash.   The white round cloud is condensed water.

Here’s a wider shot:

You can see the plume must be very high.  See it has cast a shadow on the cloud layer, which has been pushed away from the volcano by the rising air.

Here’s the original image from NASA

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS020&roll=E&frame=9048

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This photo is from January 29th 2009, at approximately 3-4PM over Corvallis, Oregon.

It shows a contrail from a plane that has made a 540 degree turn (one and half full turns) to fly back the way it came.  This photo was probably taken an hour after the plane made the turn, judging by the amount of spread.

This provoked some interest in the local press:

What’s that up in the sky?
By Alex Paul
Gazette-Times reporter

Jet trail has mid-valley looking up, imaginations soaring
A misguided passenger airliner?
A military jet on maneuvers?
A visitor from another planet who decided not to stick around?

They even got a quote from a local authority:

But another viewer noted, “I got a shot of this unusual trail also. I’m an aircraft mechanic and that does not seem like a condensation trail to me.”

(Not sure why an aircraft mechanic would be an expert on contrails, but there you go).

The next day, things were resolved:

Contrail could be from Boeing jet
By Steve Lathrop
For the gazette-Times
Test flight tracked as far south as mid-valley
…
FlightAware.com shows the meandering path of a flight [BOE504 - a Boeing 737-800 test aircraft] from Boeing Field in Seattle that apparently came as far south as the mid-valley Thursday and then returned. The site says the plane departed at 11:40 a.m. and landed at 2:59 p.m. The loop-the-loop contrail was photographed over Albany around 2:30. At its southern tip over the mid-valley, the flight path shown on the site appears to circle in just the shape the contrails were seen.

Several readers sent in photos.

This contrail is very similar to the one I described (and tracked with FlightAware) in Voodoo Contrails, but what’s interesting here is the similarity of the story to stories in “contrail confusion is nothing new“, where, back in the 1950s, people were having the exact same reactions to contrails, and newspapers were writing the same stories:

Back in the 1950s, of course, contrails were less common.  Now it takes a rather unusual contrail to spark the public’s imagination.     However, in some places, contrails are still relativly uncommon, so still get mistaken for UFOs, such as these in Hawaii, 2007:

Contrails form when the water in engine exhaust mixes with cold moist air and freezes. Normally you see this at 30,000 feet with jet engine exhaust. But in some parts of the world, these conditions can be found at ground level. Here’s a car leaving a contrail in Whitehorse, Canada.

(Photo by Yukon White Light, original here)

Over time these contrails can spread out to form a haze that covers the area.

From a distance this ice fog (Seen here in Fairbanks, Alaska) can look just a like layer of cloud or mist:

Here the individual car contrails quickly merge into a single sheet due to their small size and large number.  A jumbo jet obviously creates a much bigger contrail, something more like the building in the middle of the above photo.   That’s why you get the more distinct white lines in the sky.  And of course, at around 30,000 feet, it’s much more likely to be 40 below than it is at ground level – except for Alaska in the winter.

At the South Pole, they regularly have contrails at ground level:

Here’s an article from 1957 describing how these ground level contrails can persist and spread – just like contrails at high altitude:

[Update 2010-4-26]

See also:

http://orsovolante.blogspot.com/2010/04/ma-come-fanno.html#googtrans/it/en

Which discusses several photos from this photographer:

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?photographersearch=ivandalavia

Like:

1988 – A vapour trail crosses the sky above the Suleymaniye Mosque and the Yeni Cami or New Mosque in Istanbul

1970 – Vapour trails across the sky

1970 – Vapour trails across a pink sky at sunset

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I took these photos around 8AM this morning, Feb 4th 2009, in Los Angeles.

They show Cirrus Uncinus clouds, with a contrail running through them.

Cirrus uncinus clouds (or “Mares’ Tails”), according to wikipedia:

Cirrus uncinus is a type of cirrus cloud. The name cirrus uncinus is derived from Latin, meaning “curly hooks”. Also known as mares’ tails, these clouds are generally sparse in the sky, and very thin.

The clouds occur at very high altitudes, at a temperature of about minus 40-50 degrees Celsius. They are generally seen when a warm or occluded front is approaching. They are very high in the troposphere, and generally mean that precipitation, usually rain, is approaching.

And indeed, looking at the forcast, rain is coming, predicted for tomorrow and the next three days.

The long “tails” of the cirrus uncinus clouds are actually precipitation – very high snow in the form of tiny ice crystals falling through the air.  The wind blows these sideways, giving the distinctive hook shape.

The contrail in the same region is persisting for the same reason the clouds persist – it’s in a region of the atmosphere where there is moisture.  Notice the abrupt end of both the the contrail and the clouds at the left of the second photo. Contrails are a form of cirrus cloud, and if there is enough moisture in the air, a contrail will eventually spread to be indistingushable from the surrounding cirrus.  In this case though, the cirrus uncinus would have been exactly the same even if there were no contrails.

I was watching the first episode of The Twilight Zone, Where is Everybody, made in 1959, and I noticed that the movie poster had a nice depiction of some persistent contrails forming a grid:

I don’t think it’s a real poster, but it’s a real movie (Battle Hymn, with Rock Hudson), and a real 1959 episode of the Twilight Zone.  Just goes to show, contrails have been in American popular culture for quite a long time, at least fifty years.

If anyone recognizes the original image, please let me know where it’s from.

And while we are on the subject of posters, check this out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49502995517@N01/433032511

This is an actual photo, not photoshopped.  

The stork is not at the same altitude as the contrail, it’s actually quite a bit lower.   It’s the same thing when you see two planes, one making a contrail, and one not – they are just at different altitudes.

I was walking along this morning at around 10AM, when I noticed a huge semi circular contrail, somewhere to the south of LAX.  This is something I’ve never seen before.  The weather was very well suited for contrails, and there were quite a few criss-crossing the sky.   

Then about half an hour later I saw another one.   Now it was really interesting.   I hurried home to get my camera, but by the time I was home things had blown east a bit, and I was not able to get a very good shot.

You’ll have to take my word for it – it was very impressive.   I’m hoping that people in the “chemtrail” community will also have seen it and will post some better photos, and I can update this post.

[UPDATE 12/4/08] Here’s One from the Ontario Weather Service, titled “A perfect circle”: 11/20/08 – “A Perfect circle in the morning”, taken by Bettina Gilois, Pacific Palisades, CA:

So what was it?   Well, I went to the FlightAware web site and looked for planes that looked suspicious.   I saw one flying over Catalina, with the call sign VooDoo1, so I looked at that, and bingo:

That’s the guy.  The text next to the plane reads:

VOODOO1 B722
291 377
KLAX KLAX

Which means it’s a B722, flying at 29,100 feet, speed 377 knots, and it took off from LAX and is going to land there.   It’s still flying now, about three hours after I first saw it.

What is VOODOO1?  It’s actually a plane owned by Raytheon, N289MT, a test plane that they use to test avionics equipment:

Here’s the satellite photo for the region in the map, showing the high level wispy clouds, and some contrails.

The photo was taken around noon, by which time the plane was no longer leaving trails.  It’s quite possible it contributed to some of the haze over the the east.