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Atmospheric science

Seeing through contrails

Nature Climate Change volume 1, pages 24–25 (2011)Cite this article

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Contrails formed by aircraft can evolve into cirrus clouds indistinguishable from those formed naturally. These 'spreading contrails' may be causing more climate warming today than all the carbon dioxide emitted by aircraft since the start of aviation.

Aviation is at present responsible for about 3% of all fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, but an estimated 2–14% of anthropogenic climate forcing1. Furthermore, its contribution to climate forcing could triple by 2050, according to some scenarios1. As such, mitigating the impact of aviation on climate has become a subject of considerable public and political interest. The debate is complicated, however, by the fact that aviation's climate impact results from a number of different factors, as well as by the large uncertainty in the effect that some of these factors have on climate. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Burkhardt and Kärcher3 present a global modelling study that quantifies the climate effect of 'spreading contrails' — the least well quantified of all the aviation-related climate-forcing agents.

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Figure 1: Satellite infrared images of contrails spreading into cirrus clouds over the UK.

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Author notes

  1. olivier.boucher@metoffice.gov.uk

  2. olivier.boucher@lmd.jussieu.fr

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Olivier Boucher is at the Met Office Hadley Centre, Fitzroy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK,

    Olivier Boucher

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  1. Olivier Boucher
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Correspondence to Olivier Boucher.

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Boucher, O. Seeing through contrails. Nature Clim Change 1, 24–25 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1078

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