I will soon be setting up my writing space and committing myself to the task of writing a short book on the Earth’s changing atmosphere(s), based on a survey of all English-language articles about condensation trails, and connected articles on atmospheric h2o, published in scientific journals since the start of the jet age. In this missive to my Manitoulin Permaculture community, I will practice conciseness in retelling what I learned from that survey.
I began my research because I had noticed that the look and behaviour of condensation trails, contrails, was changing. The persisting and spreading contrails we are familiar with today did not exist at the beginning of the jet age. Following the path of the chronological survey we can see that the first persisting and spreading contrails shocked and dismayed observers and in scientific and popular publications from the sixties there can be found articles and photographs of these rare occurrences with much excited speculation as to their identity. Through the seventies and eighties, new nomenclature is installing itself in the journals on atmospheric physics and after 2000 there is regular use of a term for a NEW ‘species’ of cloud – the “Jet Cirrus”.

Continue reading »