It's a subject rich in irony.
Contrails laid in a
supersaturated layer in the LOW STRATOSPHERE, seven miles up, which is typically at a temperature of -40 (either scale!), will
seed the precipitation of
pure water from the supersaturated water vapor around the trail by a factor of up to
ten thousand times by weight.
Such a dilution, of course, means the trail is perfectly drinkable, although your tastebuds would probably sense the partially-burnt hydrocarbons. Perrier water?
The trail ice falls towards the tropopause into
progressively cooling conditions, which protect it from evaporation, until it falls beneath the tropopause into
progressively warming conditions, where it evaporates, releasing its relatively tiny burden of partially-burnt hydrocarbons and very fine soot particles.
As the trails are swept into the plane's two wave vortices almost immediately they're made, they become strongly mixed with the surrounding air, and are able to make this copious exchange, falling as discrete columns, with their centres containing the largest and most rapidly-falling crystals.
As they pass through successive lower layers they are subject to
shear, because typically each layer has a relative lateral motion - they slide in different directions past each other. It doesn't make much sense to call this movement "winds".
And so you get what you see... ...flat cirrostratus widening to perhaps five miles in width, and possibly running from horizon to horizon.
Depending on the heading and speed of the stratosphere (its average speed is above 50mph, and its maximum 150mph), regular shuttle flights will produce
parallel lines, and crossing shuttle flights will produce
grids.
"Chemtrailers" will often argue, accepting these facts, that the trails are an obvious "pollution", and should be stopped anyway, for that reason.
But they are WRONG.
ALL clouds are witness of "pollution"; whether water droplets or ice crystals, they only form when there is a PARTICLE to SEED their growth. It is the absence of such particles which forces supersaturation in the first place. Supersaturated layers are PERFECTLY CLEAN.
The water cycle in the atmosphere rigorously removes particulates from the atmosphere, so that NO trace remains of even a major volcanic eruption (which may loft particles as high as Edward Teller intended - 80,000 feet) after a couple of years.
Here is the confirmatory reference (itself replete with further references):
http://www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/sass/pub...s_JAMC2006.pdf
The trail weight figures for a Boeing 747 cruising in the stratosphere are given as 16 Kg per metre. A 5,000 Km flight through such conditions (unlikely!) would obviously dump (5000*1000*16/1000) = 80,000 tonnes of ice as a trail - some trail... ...and a Jumbo obviously doesn't
carry that, does it?
Here is the most comprehensive debunk:
Contrail Science
And here is mine:
JazzRoc versus “Chemtrails”
A long time ago, my first job was as an aeroengineer at the National Gas Turbine Establishment, Pyestock, Hants, UK.
I guess that makes me a paid tool of the
gubmint...
The final irony is that top hoaxsters
do get paid, by site hit advertising (up to $50K p.a.), marketing CDs, and selling "cloudbusters", colloidal silver, etc.
Now THAT is ironic...
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