7 ms·
Contrails Map
- zeristor 9mo agoAmazing visualisation, an excellent tool. Are there other sites that can suggest how much of an issue it is, and how much flight plan tweaking could improve this. Remember kids a 1° C rise in temperature can mean 7% more water vapour in the air, and with water vapour being a greenhouse gas itself this can cause heating and holding yet more water.
- victorbjorklund 9mo agoThe site itself has more information. https://contrails.org/ https://contrails.org/ I guess the map is posted today due to this recent video (worth a watch): https://youtu.be/QoOVqQ5sa08?si=sGK9Q9tUoFOW1QZg https://youtu.be/QoOVqQ5sa08?si=sGK9Q9tUoFOW1QZg
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Sieyk 9mo agoI was expecting this to be a gag about chemtrails. I am glad I was wrong.
- msuniverse2026 9mo ago[flagged]
- rkomorn 9mo ago> I am just so embarrassed on behalf of people who still think this doesn't exist and is all some conspiracy without any basis. Downvoted for this, at the very least, and also downvoted for the fact you think you're entitled to an explanation even with your tone.
- smeeagain2 9mo ago[dead]
- rkomorn 9mo agoI downvote people who express things disrespectfully, like saying they're "embarrassed on behalf" of people who don't think like them. So yeah, I'll be a totalitarian censor against people who put down others while expressing their opinions. They also requested that people explain their downvotes, so I did, but I also find it objectionable to say something like "I'm embarrassed for you, but if you downvote me, you owe me an explanation." That's a one way street for respect.
- smeeagain2 9mo ago[flagged]
- jibal 9mo ago> I am just so embarrassed on behalf of people who still think this doesn't exist and is all some conspiracy without any basis. There's plenty of basis for thinking it's uninformed or intellectually dishonest conspiracy mongering. And please don't rant at HN.
- andai 9mo agoI'm out of the loop, didn't the government admit this stuff a few years ago? I was at a presentation in Croatia recently about weather modification in Yugoslavia. This is considered public knowledge there. When Yugoslavia fell apart, Croatia was no longer permitted to engage in weather modification. The main method discussed was the use of small rockets. It was used for agricultural purposes.
- dns_snek 9mo agoThe problem is the unsubstantiated logical leap from "weather modification is possible" to "contrails behind commercial aircraft are secretly dispersing chemicals in order to control weather". If I was an evil government figure trying to secretly control weather, there are better ways of doing that (e.g. drones, rockets) than orchestrating a conspiracy that requires hundreds of thousands of people to stay quiet for decades.
- andai 9mo agoYeah, that's true. Besides, it would be morally wrong!
- nephihaha 9mo agoThey definitely increase the cloud cover where I live. Very noticeable, you can often see which clouds were created by them... And that's without the conspiratorial stuff.
- dr_dshiv 9mo agoWould be great for shiptracks, too— which used to mitigate 1/3 of the warming impact of maritime shipping — until the 2022 clean fuel standards were implemented.
- extropy 9mo agoI'm not following the logic why contrails cause net warming. Why nuclear blasts - that also introduce lots of particles in atmosphere cause a cooling effect - "nuclear winter"?
- maltelau 9mo agoWater vapour absorbs the thermal radiation (heat trying to escape earth) better than it absorbs sunlight (heat trying to enter earth). Therefore, the more water vapour in the atmosphere, the stronger the greenhouse effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
- pfdietz 9mo agoIn this case I believe it's not water vapor, but rather reflection of IR from ice crystals.
- ekunazanu 9mo agoThe difference is that water vapour is a greenhouse gas. IIRC the net warming effect of clouds is a function of altitude.
- ejago53 9mo agoYes, also a mushroom cloud from a nuclear blast blocks light from passing through which reduces heating on the ground whereas contrails are thin which lets light through but still retains heat below them.
- rottencupcakes 9mo agoThey don’t cause net warming, it’s transient. If we stopped flying tomorrow it would go away quickly. But we keep flying. But even with that the amount of warming this continuous effect creates is quite small and negligible compared to greenhouse gas warming and isn’t really worth talking about.
- p-a_58213 9mo agoThe team behind this is world-class. Among other things, they have developed a python library that could be used to model contrails in your own projects. https://py.contrails.org https://py.contrails.org
- reactordev 9mo agoIt states that half of aircraft pollution is from contrails made of aircraft soot. I’d like to see the literature and discovery of aircraft soot. As an engineer who has built aircraft, I find this fascinating. I would like to measure my amount of soot. How does one go about measuring how much soot I have? Obviously if my exhaust ports are black that’s bad but I’m genuinely curious about this as I’ve always assumed “black smoke bad, white smoke ok”. As for contrails, disturbing the atmosphere is going to cause some freezing (clouds) at that altitude, at that temperature. How do you suggest we mitigate that? Fly lower and burn more fuel? Fly less and tell people to take the train or that their package will arrive next week?
- ant6n 9mo agoNight trains
- baobun 9mo agoWhat would make you say such a thing?
- roxolotl 9mo agoFly less. Is waiting a week for a package really that big of a deal? Is traveling less really that much to ask? It’s totally ok to be skeptical of the claims. I can’t make a judgement on them as I know even less than you might. But that’s not a reason to doubt that human’s environment impact matters and that maybe part of the solution is for those of us with access to 2day delivery for everything and cheap flights live a teeny bit more like those who don’t.
- harddrivereque 9mo agoIt is easy to suggest to fly less but it is going to be impossible to convince society where core values include agressive "extra" consumption, which in turn is the backbone of the world's current economy. Flying is one of top "extra" consumption types out there. I know many people are trying to convince people of that, but the society is moving in the opposite direction - bigger cars (both us and eu), more travel. Maybe arguments used currently are not convincing enough? I mean, sure, keep trying and you will obviously reach a certain 0.00x% of the population, but that's not really going to make any difference
- janpmz 9mo agoPreserving the aesthetics of the sky is reason enough to stop artificial clouds. Why would we accept such a mess?
- nephihaha 9mo agoTwo links about "stratospheric aerosol injection" from mainstream sources. "The Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA) - a government backed body - is funding nearly £60m that could allow real-world experiments, including in the UK. "As part of the Exploring Climate Cooling programme, projects in Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) will involve trying to thicken Arctic sea ice and make clouds more reflective." https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/c5ygydeqq08o https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/c5ygydeqq08o Paper on how "Low-Altitude High-Latitude Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Is Feasible With Existing Aircraft" https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024EF005567 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024EF00...
- api 9mo agoSo there are papers. There are studies on tons and tons of things. One of the things you learn really studying science is that there are always papers, and you really have to immerse yourself in a field to see what’s actually happening. People who believe in chemtrails need to prove that the it’s being done, is being done at industrial scale (not just a few one off experiments), and that this is harmful to human health or the environment. Ocean fertilization to soak up CO2 has been extensively studied and in that case there are documented experiments, but we are not doing it at scale… mostly because nobody wants to pay for it and because we are not 100% sure the CO2 will actually be sequestered. There’s also some concern about side effects on ocean ecosystems. A lot of things get studied. Of course the real conspiracy I keep hearing is that this is some kind of mind control thing. Why? Even if that were possible, why bother when you can mesmerize humans at scale with mindless slop scrollers like TikTok and program them like a zombie army. Much cheaper and done 100% in the open.
- nephihaha 9mo agoI've never taken much of an interest in the chemtrail thing, but it does seem funny that governments are proposing to do more or less the same thing they denied doing! I can't see this being the answer though. Maybe I'm wrong, but it wouldn't be the first time environmental measures have proven destructive. Some of the most invasive pests have been brought in to control a less invasive ones e.g. cane toads in Australia. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
- andai 9mo agoI found this extremely interesting and enjoyable. I would however recommend testing it on a slower internet connection and a lower end device. Because I was spending 90% of my time in the "loading data" phases, and once the intro was done, the thing ran at one frame per second and I was not able to use it. (I have 5G and I bought my phone last year.)
- HPsquared 9mo agoIt literally (and repeatably) crashes Chrome on my android phone that has 6 GB of RAM. As in the entire browser closes. EDIT: Though it's pretty cool on a powerful desktop. Maybe could benefit from performance optimization.
- mlshapiro 9mo agoThanks for the feedback! We have done all the performance optimization we can in its current manifestation. We're in the process of refactoring the models that support these visualizations, so we hope to make it more performant in the near future. Hopefully end of this year.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 9mo agoThis group is funded by Orca Sciences, which is also behind Standard Thermal. https://www.orcasciences.com/ https://www.orcasciences.com/
- mlshapiro 9mo agoThat's right! The project started at Orca Sciences back in 2021. We moved to Breakthrough Energy in 2023, and will be spinning out into our own standalone non-profit soon.
- sublinear 9mo agoAll I really learned from this is that European skies have a much higher density of flights than the rest of the world. If the future of aviation is similar flight densities everywhere then people might actually begin to care about this topic.
- prennert 9mo agoRemember that there are more flights during the day than during the night. When you posted this it was late afternoon in Europe, noon on the East Coast US and early morning on the West Coast. And of course it was night in Asia.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mlshapiro 9mo agoHi all - very grateful to see this posted here. I'm the director of this project and would be happy to answer questions. We are seeking a high level full stack engineer to join the team to work on infrastructure for this and other efforts. Please reach out if interested - info@contrails.org
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoWhere are the rocket launches? Surely those are worth measuring as they are a daily occurrence on Earth.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pupdogg 9mo agoBelow is a comprehensive list of geoengineering-related patents, compiled to the best of my knowledge. Based on the language and scope of several of these patents, their stated purposes do not appear to be inherently human-friendly in any form as the language escalates from weather influence to planetary irradiation, artificial plasmas, relativistic particles, atmospheric weapons-scale energy systems, and even the generation of destructive weather events. https://gist.github.com/pupdogg/4e796ed1bb0d24338a3f6523e4047f33 https://gist.github.com/pupdogg/4e796ed1bb0d24338a3f6523e404... Examples: 1. System and Method for Irradiation of Planet Surface Areas 2. Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere, and/or Magnetosphere 3. Broadcast Dissemination of Trace Quantities of Biologically Active Chemicals 4. Method and Apparatus for Creating an Artificial Electron Cyclotron Heating Region of Plasma 5. Method and Apparatus for Triggering a Substantial Change in Earth Characteristics and Measuring Earth Changes 6. Planetary Weather Modification System
- Arn_Thor 9mo agoThe fact that someone has filed a patent doesn't mean that they have a workable idea, only that they can formulate and illustrate said idea and that it doesn't overlap with something that already exists.
- pupdogg 9mo agoTotally agree, a patent by itself doesn't prove something was built or used, just that the idea could be described and cleared prior art. But are you saying none of those patents are even indirectly related to publicly documented programs like: 1. Operation Sea-Spray (1950) 2. Operation LAC (late 1950s–60s) 3. Operation Dew (ZnCdS tests) We know these tests only became public decades later through hearings and declassification. Given that history, it seems fair to ask how much related research or enabling tech might still be classified. Lack of a clear public link doesn't really prove there wasn't one - it may just mean it hasn't been disclosed yet.
- Arn_Thor 9mo ago
- nanoecosystems 9mo agoVery interesting project! The possibility of showcasing the flat planet concept was just the tip of the iceberg. Including aspects like water pollution and health risks would add significant value to this already impressive initiative. Thank you for sharing!
- rajnathani 9mo agoFrom the "about" it seems that the data is from atmospheric models based on flight paths. However, it would be cool if the data could be inferred from satellite sensing.