Chimney Rock - Sierra Buttes / North Yuba
Contrails – you’ve seen them – man-made clouds that remind us there’s nothing we can’t mess with. The word contrail is derived from the word condensation. However, if you are one of the many people who feel that “THEY” have dosed these linear clouds with sinister substances, the word is chemtrail. My own take is that long straight lines across the heavens are incredibly ugly and are a hell of a thing to ask us to accept as “the price of doing business.”
For at least the past 60 years aircraft have repeatedly slashed the skyscape with contrails in the name of progress. Now those annoying white lines (reminiscent of celestial cocaine) are a part of every sunny-day hike. With jet travel expected to triple by 2050 we’re in for a lot of ugly geometry above us.
Grouse Ridge/ South Yuba
According to NASA, contrails are clouds formed when water vapor condenses and freezes around small particles that exist in aircraft exhaust. Some of that water vapor comes from the air around the plane and some is added by the exhaust of the aircraft. Contrails form at very high altitudes (usually above 8 km), where the air is less than minus 40°C. For what it’s worth, they can be classified into three groups: short-lived, persistent (non-spreading) and persistent spreading.
Anthropogenic clouds impact the climate by modifying the energy balance between sunlight and infrared energy in the atmosphere, and they may affect the water vapor content and chemistry of the upper troposphere. As the volume of commercial air travel increases, these effects will undoubtedly become more important. The EPA concluded that “Persistent contrails pose no direct threat to public health” but added: “Contrail cloudiness might contribute to human-induced climate change.”
Lindsey Lake/ South Yuba
Whether contrails effect climate remains unclear, but the unsightly mess they leave in a once true-blue sky is all too clear. How often have you been out hiking or skiing, feeling blissfully remote, only to have a bright-white gash ripping into an otherwise profoundly cerulean sky (thanks to Bob Ross for cerulean). Or, after waiting for that “just-right light” for your photographic masterpiece, the notoriously straight-line sky slasher, innocuously called “contrails”, appears to slice up the sky. Even highly-respected landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, ranted about the ubiquitous “sky worms” that annoyed the blue sky over his beloved Sierra Nevada. Nevertheless, Adams himself, photographed them from Roseville, California for his 1953 photo entitled Rails and Jet Trails.
Ansel Adams, 1953
