Publication Date:
2010-05-17
Description:
Lineshaped contrails were detected with the research aircraft Falcon during the CONCERT – CONtrail and Cirrus ExpeRimenT – campaign in October/November 2008. Thereby the Falcon was equipped with a set of instruments to measure particle properties such as the particle size distribution, shape, extinction, chemical composition as well as trace gas concentrations of sulfur dioxide (SO2), reactive nitrogen and halogen species (NO, NOy, HNO3, HONO, HCl), ozone (O3) and carbon monoxide (CO). During 12 mission flights over Western Europe numerous contrails and cirrus clouds were probed at altitudes between 8.5 and 11.6 km and temperatures above 213 K. 22 contrails from 11 different aircraft were observed near and below ice saturation. The observed NO mixing ratios, ice crystal and soot number densities are compared to a process based contrail model. Further we investigate in detail the contrail from a CRJ-2 aircraft detected on 19 November 2008 in 10.1 km altitude. The contrail with an age of 1 to 2 min had average ice crystal concentrations of 128 cm−3 in the size range 0.4
Electronic ISSN:
1680-7375
Topics:
Geosciences