Dr Edward Gryspeerdt (Imperial College London)
Covid, contrails and climate change
Abstract: Unlike greenhouse gases, contrails (line shaped clouds formed by aircraft) are an easily visible human-driven warming of the climate system. The total magnitude of the warming from contrails is highly uncertain, but is approximately equal to the warming from all greenhouse gases emitted from every aircraft since the dawn of flight.
The shutdown in aviation due to the COVID-19 pandemic and new satellite data provide a unique opportunities to measure the warming impact of aviation on the climate. From tracking the impact of individual aircraft to observing large scale changes in cloud, satellites find large impacts of aviation on clouds and show us which types aircraft have particularly large warming impacts on the climate. With a wide range of initial conditions, contrails can also give us an insight into the impact of aerosol perturbations on natural cirrus clouds.