Formation and radiative forcing of contrail cirrus

By Bernd Kärcher. 2018

360 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Aircraft-produced contrail cirrus clouds contribute to anthropogenic climate change. Observational data sets and modelling approaches have become available that clarify formation pathways close to the source aircraft and lead to estimates of the global distribution of their microphysical and optical properties. While contrail cirrus enhance the impact of natural clouds on climate, uncertainties remain regarding their properties and lifecycle. Progress in representing aircraft emissions, contrail cirrus and natural cirrus in global climate models together with tighter constraints on the sensitivity of the climate system will help judge efficiencies of and trade-offs between mitigation options.Condensation trails produced by jet aircraft contribute to anthropogenic climate change, yet the magnitude of their impact remains unclear. Here, the author reviews progress in understanding contrails since the last IPCC report (1999), assesses the remaining uncertainty, and identifies potential mitigating options and pathways forward.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

• The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018 (2020, neutral): “Another correlation of forcing terms not considered here may be the dependence of the soot direct effect and contrail properties on the soot number index since ice nucleation at the time of contrail formation depends on the soot number index (e.g., Kärcher, 2018).”