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Clouds, contrails and climate

Nature volume 391, pages 837–838 (1998) Cite this article

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Cirrus clouds warm the Earth. Their formation is incompletely understood, but recent studies hint that they can evolve from jet contrails. This is an unsuspected, but possibly important, effect of human activity on climate — offering a new way to study the processes involved.

More than half of the solar radiation reflected by the Earth comes from clouds. So how might increasing levels of anthropogenic aerosols — sulphates, organics and trace gases such as nitric acid — affect the formation of cirrus clouds over the planet and thereby alter the radiation balance?

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Figure 1: Clouds over the north Pacific Ocean.

UNIV. WASHINGTON

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  1. the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and the Department of Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Mail Code 104-44, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    John H. Seinfeld

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  1. John H. Seinfeld
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Seinfeld, J. Clouds, contrails and climate. Nature 391, 837–838 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/35974

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