Articles | Volume 18, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-37-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-37-2025
Research article
 | 
07 Jan 2025
Research article |  | 07 Jan 2025

Ground-based contrail observations: comparisons with reanalysis weather data and contrail model simulations

Jade Low, Roger Teoh, Joel Ponsonby, Edward Gryspeerdt, Marc Shapiro, and Marc E. J. Stettler

Model code and software

pycontrails: Python library for modeling aviation climate impacts (v0.52.2) M. Shapiro et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13151570

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Short summary
The radiative forcing due to contrails is of the same order of magnitude as aviation CO2 emissions but has a higher uncertainty. Observations are vital to improve our understanding of the contrail lifecycle, improve models, and measure the effect of mitigation action. Here, we use ground-based cameras combined with flight telemetry to track visible contrails and measure their lifetime and width. We evaluate model predictions and demonstrate the capability of this approach.