Second World War Bombers Changed the Weather

An interesting new report

Allied bombing raids during the second world war inadvertently experimented on the weather by producing huge contrails over south-east England. A study of one 1944 raid offers a rare opportunity to check our models of how contrails change temperatures.

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In the 1940s – unlike today – there was hardly any civilian air traffic, so historical records offer an opportunity to test the daytime effects. "Pilots cared about contrails a lot," says Rob MacKenzie, formerly of Lancaster University, and now at the University of Birmingham, UK. "Aircraft were tracked using contrails and shot down. So pilots would report them."

Using operational records from the US Army Air Force and the British Royal Air Force, and archived weather data, Timmis and MacKenzie realised they could compare temperatures immediately beneath a raid's flight path to those several kilometres upwind, where there would have been no contrails.

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Timmis and MacKenzie found that where the aircraft circled and assembled into formation it was significantly cloudier and 0.8 °C cooler than the area upwind of the bases.

www.newscientist.com...

reply to post by Essan


Makes you wonder what they can do purposefully when it comes to climate modification!

reply to post by TechUnique


Nothing at all, since those WW2 contrails are a fake according to leading contrail denier TankerEnemy: