Contrails: Properties - Global Modeling - Mitigation

Kurzfassung

The most important but least understood component in aviation climate impact assessments are contrails, which form as line shaped ice clouds (linear contrails) and transform into irregularly shaped ice clouds (contrail cirrus). No reliable best estimate of the contrail cirrus climate impact exists. This talk gives an introduction to the topic and draws attention to the issue of detectability of contrails by passive remote sensing and to the latest development of process based contrail cirrus parameterization in a climate model. In particular, the following questions will be addressed: Why study contrails in the first place? How do contrails form? Are contrails different from natural cirrus? How can we estimate the climate impact of contrail cirrus? Can the climate impact of contrail cirrus be mitigated?