What is a contrail and how does it form?

The title of this thread is from this NOAA page about contrails.

There are a lot of myths about contrails out there - it seems to me that the 2 most prevalent ones are that they can only last a short time, that they cannot spread out.

So here I'm linking a few well respected scientific pages that explain contrails - IMO they do so very well.

Firstly is the NOAA page above

The next link is the contrail page from CIMSS - Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies - a 3-way co-operative effort between NOAA, NASA and University of Wisonsin

Then there is Why do jets leave a white trail in the sky? from Scientific American

For a cross-ditch perspective there is also the Royal Meteorological Society

and lastly some photos of contrails from weather scape illustrating various ways they interact with the atmosphere.

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


Another thing...

Most "chemmies" say that the chemtrail debunkers only provide links to www.contrailscience.com

So, bravo for linking multiple sources. Eventually they'll have to take the time to learn about contrails (at least, you would think).

Thanks for the information package. I'm reading through it now...

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul



S&F Aloysius

You do realise though that the morons who should be checking out your links are too busy posting on glp