Saturday, November 19, 2011

Humidity levels determine jet contrails

Baltimore Sun reporter Candus Thomson offers this guest post:

An Inner Harbor tourist asked no one in particular (I was eavesdropping): Why is it that on some days, the sky is a crisscross of white jet contrails while on others the blueness is unblemished?

It all has to do with humidity levels up there. Low humidity means the atmosphere can absorb the water vapor produced by jet engines. But when the humidity is higher, the vapor, which freezes into droplets, has nowhere to go. The frozen particles then make spectacles of themselves.

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