Petition for less clouds!

I guess is not everyday that you'll find The Cloud Appreciation Society petitioning for LESS clouds, but that is exactly what they have just done on the Governments' website. They are calling on the Prime Minister to use air-traffic management to keep European aircraft outside of contrail-forming regions of the atmosphere. Reducing contrails (ie the long man-made clouds that form behind high altitude planes) would bring an immediate reduction in high clouds with a corresponding immediate decrease in global warming.

This petition at least might be a different way to get people to think about the consequences of flying! While shifting some flights around could have a significant effect on reducing climate change, the real action we need to take is to not expand flying and look at ways we can reduce it.

Heres what the Cloud Appreciation Society say:

Hot moist gases from jet exhausts cool very rapidly as they mix with air at higher altitudes and this results in the formation of ice crystals. When the air is cold and moist enough, these ice crystals will be spread by the wind, gathering water vapour and growing. After 9/11 all commercial flights were grounded for three days. Various lines of research have led to the conclusion that aviation-induced cloud, which is thin and high in the atmosphere, is a more significant factor in global warming than the CO2 emissions from the flights. Thin cloud lets the warmth of the sun through but insulates at night, giving overall warming. Recent research conducted at Imperial College London shows that minor changes in flight paths can reduce contrail formation with only a small fuel and time penalty. Operational changes that avoid contrail formation can immediately reduce the associated climatic impacts.

There does seem to be a growing body of evidence to suggest that contrails result in increased levels of high cloud, which tend to trap in the sun's heat, increasing surface temperatures in the regions they cover. Lower clouds have the opposite effect - of reflecting away much of the sun's radiation. Indeed, the effect of all cloud types taken as a whole, seems to be a cooling one. The tendency of contrails to spread out and lead to increased levels of high, 'cirriform' clouds is in danger of distorting this effect. Aircraft do not always need to fly at contrail-producing altitudes. It might be possible to limit cruising altitudes with air-traffic ceilings based on the
atmospheric conditions, in order to reduce the effects of cloud formation without overly increasing fuel consumption.

For details of petition see: http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/attention/

For more details of the Cloud Appreciation Society go to their website - also some great photos like the one above: http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/

And we haven't even got to Chemtrails - for more on that go to my blog entry on 13th March 2007.