Contrail coverage over the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. (1st March 2022)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Contrail coverage over the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. (1st March 2022)
- Main Title:
- Contrail coverage over the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Authors:
- Meijer, Vincent R
Kulik, Luke
Eastham, Sebastian D
Allroggen, Florian
Speth, Raymond L
Karaman, Sertac
Barrett, Steven R H - Abstract:
- Abstract: Contrails are potentially the largest contributor to aviation-attributable climate change, but estimates of their coverage are highly uncertain. No study has provided observation-based continental-scale estimates of the diurnal, seasonal, and regional variability in contrail coverage. We present contrail coverage estimates for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 for the contiguous United States, derived by developing and applying a deep learning algorithm to over 100 000 satellite images. We estimate that contrails covered an area the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined in the years 2018 and 2019. Comparing 2019 and 2020, we quantify a 35.8% reduction in distance flown above 8 km altitude and an associated reduction in contrail coverage of 22.3%. We also find that the diurnal pattern in contrail coverage aligns with that of flight traffic, but that the amount of contrail coverage per distance flown decreases in the afternoon.
- Is Part Of:
- Environmental research letters. Volume 17:Number 3(2022)
- Journal:
- Environmental research letters
- Issue:
- Volume 17:Number 3(2022)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 17, Issue 3 (2022)
- Year:
- 2022
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 3
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2022-0017-0003-0000
- Page Start:
- Page End:
- Publication Date:
- 2022-03-01
- Subjects:
- contrails -- aviation -- remote sensing -- COVID
Environmental sciences -- Periodicals
Human ecology -- Research -- Periodicals
Environmental health -- Periodicals
333.7 - Journal URLs:
- http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326 ↗
http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1748-9326 ↗
http://ioppublishing.org/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1088/1748-9326/ac26f0 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1748-9326
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 3791.592955
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British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 22335.xml