this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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Modern aircraft emit less carbon than older aircraft, but their contrails may do more environmental harm (phys.org)
submitted 1 month ago by solo@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Led by scientists at Imperial College London, the study highlights the immense challenges the aviation industry faces to reduce its impact on the climate. The new study also found that private jets produce more contrails than previously thought, potentially leading to outsized impacts on climate warming.

Contrails, or condensation trails, are thin streaks of cloud created by aircraft exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

While the exact warming effect of contrails is uncertain, scientists believe it is greater than warming caused by carbon emissions from jet fuel.

Published in Environmental Research Letters, the study used machine learning to analyze satellite data on more than 64,000 contrails from a range of aircraft flying over the North Atlantic Ocean.

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[โ€“] grue@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I'm skeptical that a cloud that persists for a few (minutes? hours?) could have more global warming impact than CO~2~ that persists for years. Has this been peer-reviewed? Have other researchers endorsed their methodology?

[โ€“] solo@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

  1. More info on the cloud formed behind the aircraft or contrail are in the study itself (see link above). If I got it right it is observable from satellite 30 min behind the aircraft, for less than an hour.

  2. In relation to your question on if it has been peer reviewed, I could say that to my understanding this is a standard policy of IOP Science (details here).