Changes in Cirrus Cloudiness and their Relationship to Contrails

Condensation trails, or contrails, formed in the wake of high-altitude aircraft have long been suspected of causing the formation of additional cirrus cloud cover. More cirrus is possible because 10 - 20% of the atmosphere at typical commercial flight altitudes is clear but ice-saturated. Since they can affect the radiation budget like natural cirrus clouds of equivalent optical depth and microphysical properties, contrail -generated cirrus clouds are another potential source of anthropogenic influence on climate. Initial estimates of contrail radiative forcing (CRF) were based on linear contrail coverage and optical depths derived from a limited number of satellite observations. Assuming that such estimates are accurate, they can be considered as the minimum possible CRF because contrails often develop into cirrus clouds unrecognizable as contrails. These anthropogenic cirrus are not likely to be identified as contrails from satellites and would, therefore, not contribute to estimates of contrail coverage. The mean lifetime and coverage of spreading contrails relative to linear contrails are needed to fully assess the climatic effect of contrails, but are difficult to measure directly. However, the maximum possible impact can be estimated using the relative trends in cirrus coverage over regions with and without air traffic. In this paper, the upper bound of CRF is derived by first computing the change in cirrus coverage over areas with heavy air traffic relative to that over the remainder of the globe assuming that the difference between the two trends is due solely to contrails. This difference is normalized to the corresponding linear contrail coverage for the same regions to obtain an average spreading factor. The maximum contrail-cirrus coverage, estimated as the product of the spreading factor and the linear contrail coverage, is then used in the radiative model to estimate the maximum potential CRF for current air traffic.