Zapping Contrails With Microwave Emitters

An anonymous reader writes "Dissipation of contrails with a powerful microwave beam aligned behind aircraft engines is being touted as a possible solution to help address air transport's effects on the climate. 'The remote heating of condensation nuclei could be achieved by applying electromagnetic radiation, such as microwaves,' says Cranfield University's Frank Noppel. 'Depending on assumptions made, calculation shows that the power required for such a device could be as little as 0.1% of the engine power.'"

I'm confused

My understanding was that contrails contribute to global dimming and are helping to keep temperatures down. If I read the article correctly, this would not remove any pollution, just remove the clouds and allow temperatures to be even higher. Reading it made me think that the goal has become to have no impact on climate at all - positive or negative. That doesn't seem right, so I think maybe I'm missing something.

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No, they're doing us a favor by zapping them so that the government mind-control chemicals will no longer effect us. c.f. "They Live" =D

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No, they're doing us a favor by zapping them so that the government mind-control chemicals will no longer effect us. c.f. "They Live" =D

I'm glad someone finally had the courage to get the ball rolling on this [wikipedia.org]. Sir, I applaud you for bringing this very real [worldaffairsbrief.com] issue to light. Often times I wonder [luxefaire.com] why the relationship [conspiracyarchive.com] between the pharmaceutical industry [psorsite.com] and secret government [meta-religion.com] organizations [mormonconspiracy.com] isn't more apparent to "normal" [aliendave.com] people.

Re:I'm confused

Zapping them so that they no longer effect us? Pssh, my source says that the microwaves are needed to ACTIVATE the next generation of chemically generated complacency.

Then again, the same guy swore Ron Paul was going to win the popular vote...

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Your understanding is flawed.

Re:I'm confused

No it isn't. Studies have shown that temperatures rose significantly across the US right after 9/11 when all planes where grounded for several days, because of clearer skies.

See here. [berkeley.edu]

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Probably due to all the politicians venting off a bunch of hot air. What is the thermal density of rhetoric and impotent american outrage?

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Correllation != Causation

however: Correlation != Causation unlikely/impossible

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Vapour trails or contrails, by affecting the Earth's radiation balance, act as a radiative forcing. Studies have found that vapour trails or contrails trap outgoing longwave radiation emitted by the Earth and atmosphere (positive radiative forcing) at a greater rate than they reflect incoming solar radiation (negative radiative forcing). Therefore, the overall net effect of contrails is positive, i.e. a warming.[2]

Wiki [wikipedia.org]

Kinda sounds like BS to me... They are somehow different from normal clouds in that they

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> Kinda sounds like BS to me...

It isn't.

> They are somehow different from normal clouds in that they trap more heat than they reflect?

No, they are like normal clouds. Some clouds reflect more heat than they trap, some trap more heat than they reflect. Contrails are like the latter.

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We should microwave _all_ the bad kinds of clouds then.... what could go wrong?

Re:I'm confused

From the wiki article it sounds suspiciously like contrails have a warming effect when they're produced either a) at night or b) during the winter. From the percentages listed, it appears that the contrails may well have a cooling effect if they're produced during the day and/or not during the winter. That makes the assertion that the net effect is heating a little easier to swallow.

No, I didn't check out the typically mangled Wikipedia reference. Seriously... citations are great, but you use journal abbreviations and short form references when you're trying to cram them onto one page abstracts, NOT when you're putting them on web pages where space is free.

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Sorry, now I see. I thought you meant that the citations should be in the article. The abbreviation was probably copypasted from somewhere, though. For the interested, it's Geophysical Research Letters 32 (2005).

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Not to mention a little extra CO2 from the 0.1% extra fuel that needs to be burned to power the microwave. And the extra fuel needed to carry the thing.

Re:I'm confused

Don't forget the extra fuel to carry the extra fuel.

Re:I'm confused

The extra fuel recursion gets to be insignificant pretty quickly...

My concern is the extra fuel necessary to carry all the smugness from the environmental lipservice of the passengers flying in the brand new iPriusplane.

Re:I'm confused

or Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites [wikipedia.org], who in turn based their design off of the Soviet Myasishchev 3M-2 [ussr-airspace.com].

particularly idiotic, since it's the pollution...

...not the contrail itself. Jets release huge quantities of "unburned hydrocarbons, particulates, sulfates, nitrogen oxides (NOX), and carbon dioxide" (link [csmonitor.com].) This cute little idea will do shit all to help that; it's just a bit of theatrics to make it look to the eye like there is less pollution.

Remember how in Sim City an airport would dramatically increase pollution for your city? Yeeeeeah, it isn't far from the truth. Airports aren't transportation hubs; they're giant kerosene burners, which is why the air absolutely stinks for miles around. I seem to recall reading that one 747 during takeoff creates more pollution than a Toyota Prius will in its entire serviceable lifetime. Obviously you can't use microwaves at any kind of intensity during taxi, run-up, or takeoff, as the ass end of the plane is facing near or at the ground.

Also, it's pretty famous now, but someone studied the weather records around September 11th, 2001 and found there was a remarkable change in the weather across the country and in fact much of the world on the few days that followed where there was very little in the way of air traffic (and another change back to "normal" when air traffic resumed.) Ask most people and they remember it being rather nice out. I remember the weather in lower NY was absolutely spectacular for several days- beautiful blue skies like I'd never seen before in that part of NY.

Logic abounds!

Reduce the atmospheric warming effect of contrails by microwaving and thereby heating the atmosphere...

Dare I say...BRILLIANT!


Actually, I wonder what effect this would have on those pesky naturally occuring clouds...

a powerful microwave beam

a possible solution to help address air transport's effects on the climate........ so the "a possible solution" to those little white trails behind jets that usually dissipate quite quickly is to shoot a powerful microwave beam in the sky. What could possibly go wrong?

0.1% is huge!

calculation shows that the power required for such a device could be as little as 0.1% of the engine power.

A 747 uses four RB211 engines (or the Pratt & Witney equivalent) each of which puts out 30 megawatts of power. So this microwave contrail zapper is going to be using 120 kilowatts of power? That's 60-80 kitchen microwaves running simultaneously. That's more power than many radio stations use to transmit. I can't help thinking this will cause more problems than it solves. How is it going to affect radar, TV, cell phones, etc? How is it going to affect other planes on the same flight path? How is it going to affect the moisture already in the air? What's going to happen when one of these aircraft come in for a landing and forgets to turn off their contrail zapper?

It's probably money a lot better spent trying to build cleaner burning engines in the first place.

Contrails both warm and cool the Earth

Jet contrails apparently serve to cool the Earth during the day, as they reflect solar radiation, while at night they serve to warm the Earth, by trapping heat. So for maximum effect, you'd want to only dissipate the contrails created during nighttime flights. This would include not just "red-eye" flights, but air cargo operations like FexEx. Measurements taken during the grounding of all commercial flights following 9/11 indicate that there was a two degree increase in the range of day/night temperatures, so elimination of just the nighttime contrails could lower temperatures by a degree or so.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.climate/index.html [cnn.com]

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It will be interesting to see if a trend develops of pre-cooked birds falling from the sky behind jetliners outfitted with this technology.

Roasted fowl falling from the heavens? It's like the Bible, only I don't have to be wandering in the desert!

Hang on...they'll be using microwaves?

Never mind. I can get that without leaving the basement.

Re:Why....

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060614-contrails.html [nationalgeographic.com] Aircraft are believed to be responsible for 2 to 3 percent of human CO2 emissions. Like other high, thin clouds, contrails reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet. However, they also trap energy in Earth's atmosphere and boost the warming effect, the study says. (See National Geographic magazine's "Global Warning: Signs From Earth.") Stuber and other scientists believe that the effect of the contrails is significant. "On average the greenhouse warming effect dominates [the effects of contrails]," said Stuber, a meteorologist at England's University of Reading.

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What are you smoking?

Define "green". If you're using it in the common manner, it means one or more of the following:

Reduced carbon footprint
Reduced toxin output
Reduction of resources required to produce
Reduction of resources required for operation

And note that this is per unit of work, whether that is passenger-mile or some other measure of work.

Note that while substitution of resource requirements can go either way with cost, reduction of resources for operation will by definition reduce cost.

Maybe y