Articles | Volume 19, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-3271-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-3271-2026
Research article
 | 
22 May 2026
Research article |  | 22 May 2026

An adaptive segmentation approach for contrail detection in meteosat second generation satellite imagery

Vanessa Santos Gabriel, Luca Bugliaro, Dennis Piontek, Sabrina Ries, and Christiane Voigt

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Cited articles

Atlas, D., Wang, Z., and Duda, D. P.: Contrails to Cirrus–Morphology, Microphysics, and Radiative Properties, J. Appl. Meteorol. Clim., 45, 5–19, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAM2325.1, 2006. a
Bakan, S., Betancor, M., Gayler, V., and Graßl, H.: Contrail frequency over Europe from NOAA satellite images, in: Annales Geophysicae, 12, 962–968, Gauthier-Villars, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00585-994-0962-y, 1994. a
Bedka, S. T., Minnis, P., Duda, D. P., Chee, T. L., and Palikonda, R.: Properties of linear contrails in the Northern Hemisphere derived from 2006 Aqua MODIS observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 772–777, https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL054363, 2013. a
Burkhardt, U., Bock, L., and Bier, A.: Mitigating the contrail cirrus climate impact by reducing aircraft soot number emissions, npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 1, 37, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-018-0046-4, 2018. a
Canny, J.: A Computational Approach to Edge Detection, IEEE T. Pattern Anal., PAMI-8, 679–698, https://doi.org/10.1109/TPAMI.1986.4767851, 1986. a
Short summary
We present a new contrail detection algorithm for the geostationary Meteosat satellite, which outperforms other algorithms for this satellite. Contrails influence the climate but are hard to identify in geostationary satellite imagery with moderate spatial resolution. With this study, we enable the design and evaluation of contrail mitigation strategies, contributing to ongoing efforts in understanding, monitoring, and reducing the climate impact of aviation-induced cirrus.
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