Chemtrails or Contrails?
One of the biggest bones of contention between groups of civilian observers is whether so called ‘chemtrails’ exist, versus the explanation that these are merely ‘contrails’.
Some believe that ‘chemtrails’ are plumes of deliberately sprayed, chemically laden substance, which remain in the sky attracting water droplets to them, until they have merged and developed in to what has become popularly named a ‘cloud blanket’. Some observers believe that ‘chemtrails’ exude from the engines of the planes, as they appear to come from the same positions as the engines. Two engine planes have two trails, four engines four trails and so on. Some have had sight of photographs of tanks inside the main fuselage and nozzles outside of certain planes, the nozzles being mounted underneath the engine turbines. Whether these are unedited photos is unclear. Whether the purpose of the tanks is to act as ballast is also unclear. The inability of the general public to inspect these aircraft at close quarters when on the ground, leaves an evidential gaping hole in the theory, which is easily exploited by the ‘contrail’ group.
The contrail proponents suggest simply that pure water vapour flows from jet engines as a product of fuel burn, which leaves vapour trails which expand in to cloud, depending on the height of the aircraft and the temperature in the air at the time. They believe that nothing is added to the fuel to enhance or increase the formation of these trails, nor is there any other substance emitted from any other part of the aircraft which contributes to the formation.
Are these trails purely water vapour? To assess that, we need to take a look at what weather modification technology exists and has been used to create effects that might appear in the form of a trail, cloud or enhancement of existing cloud features. We take a brief look at the history of US weather modification and some analysis of atmospheric particulates and modern flight, to see if either of these arguments holds weight. This article will hopefully provide the basis for our analysis of how lightning and other extreme weather phenomena might be artificially formed.
N.b. we are continually unearthing new papers and data, so some of this article may be subject to change.
The Journal of Weather Modification
Weather modification, as the above journal indicates in its first issue, has been studied since before both World Wars. One of the first attempts of weather modification was recorded in the Boston Evening Transcript November 3rd, 1892, as a series of explosions over Washington, designed to create rain after an extended dry spell. A few showers were achieved, but the attempt was abandoned after the final two explosions stopped the rain fall. There were some reports of broken glass and plaster falling from the sky, but it is unclear whether that came directly from the explosions or some other source.
Ice Nucleation
Vincent Schaefer, State University of New York of Albany, in his essay ‘The history of weather modification’ of 1968, cites Gathman’s work on ice nucleation (now known as seeding) of clouds back in 1891. In January 1941 Schaefer and his research colleagues at General Electric discovered how to replicate ice crystals in a laboratory setting. He goes on in his paper to show the results of adding dry ice to an existing cumulus cloud, appearing to create an anvil type effect. His conclusion from these experiments was that anything colder than minus 40 degrees centigrade would produce ice nucleation. The dry ice used for these experiments was liquid carbon dioxide. Experiments were carried out in the field on alto cumulus, valley fog, a super cooled cloud system where the system produced snow within 30 minutes of seeding, localised cumulus seeding for snow and groove cutting in stratus cloud. Each of the processes discovered was seeded in to existing cloud or fog structures to create the desired effects.
In order to continue working on these projects within legal parameters, General Electric sought and received a contract for Project Cirrus from the US Army Signal Corps, with input from the Navy and Airforce. Between March 1947 and September 1952 a total of 225 research flights were carried out analysing the ability of dry ice (liquid CO2), silver iodide and water seeding, to change cloud structures and produce rain, snow or other effects. Schaefer’s co-researcher Dr Bernard Vonnegut developed a complex silver iodide smoke generator for airborne use, which also included acetone with sodium or potassium iodide and charcoal/coke. When the Project disbanded in 1952, Schaefer went on to join Project Skyfire, the programme Vonnegut was working on, of ground and air silver iodide seeding generators, creating rainfall to prevent forest fires.
Rain making
Project Skywater was initiated in 1961, under the auspices of the US Bureau of Reclamation and ran alongside an already established programme by the National Science Foundation. The project was designed to research augmentation of water supply in the USA. It suffered from severe lack of funding, only receiving $1.1 million in 1965 and $3 million in 1966. Government-led projects struggled to warrant their existence, and were limited to research and development rather than implementing rain making programmes. Meanwhile private companies took the reins, with 79 weather modification projects ongoing in 1965, 60 to make rainfall and the others to mitigate undesirable weather events. Senator Dominick, in a congressional hearing, stated with dissatisfaction that ‘Russia annually spent millions to reduce hail and increase rain. Using the services of a U.S. firm, in 1967 Iran ran an intense cloud seeding project and consequently broke a six-year drought. The same firm also aided Newfoundland’s chief forester to fight raging forest fires and Cyprus to end a drought over a large portion of the island.’ The project eventually relied on gathering data from many small local projects across the United States.
Artificial Clouds and Fog
Anthropogenic (man-made) cloud formation is dependent on a number of factors. In the article ‘Conditions of anthropogenic and artificial clouds and fogs formation’ by G. I. Mazurov of the Russian State Hydrometeorological Institute, St. Petersburg November 1995, Mazurov identifies seven different anthropogenic cloud formations as follows.
The formation of tracks behind airplanes is top of the list as a round the clock phenomenon, at a range of temperatures and relative humidities. There are certain conditions required in order to promote the formation of anthropogenic or artificial clouds, number 5 being particularly interesting. A full list conditions of these conditions are ‘1) the presence of entrapping layer (boundary layer) , 2) temporal decrease of air temperature; 3) low wind speed […], high air humidity, often close to 100% […], 5) presence of condensation nuclei; 6) effect of air mass (AM) mixture; 7) vertical motions that are characteristic of the given kind of formation’. In order for a contrail to form and remain, there must be the presence of particles or condensation/ice nuclei, around which the water vapour can gather to form cloud structures. These particles would be either already present in the air or from the aircraft itself.
We all rolled our eyes when Country File, a farming programme in the UK, said that ships were responsible for the lines in the sky. It seems, according to this paper, this may be partially true. Mazurov says it is possible to create the required air circulation in the draft of planes, helicopters or ships to form a cloud body, and goes on to detail in field experiments of reagent (a substance used in a chemical reaction to produce other substances) injection in track formation at different times of day to achieve cloud formation.
Additionally cloud seeding using rocket, flare or drone style equipment would be possible from a ship base, and could target the seeding area continually from a fixed position. A number of times we have seen what seem to be unnaturally static plumes emanating from a fixed point or moving at a pace a ship might be expected to move. Given the strength of wind at both ground and cloud height, one would expect the plumes to at least expand over a larger area. Often they remain fixed, sometimes from a line of fixed points. Cloud develops from them which, as it rises then works in to the wind stream, leaving the pin point of the origin of the plume static and continuous.
Aircraft Emissions
In this aircraft emission analysis the compounds emitted by aircraft engines include carbon dioxide and soot, or black carbon. Black carbon is created when materials are combusted, in this case aircraft fuel. The conclusion of the scientists involved is that the increase of jet aircraft in the air is the direct cause of the increase of engine plumes (remember this for later). Carbon dioxide is a chemical in gaseous state, black carbon is a series of linked carbon molecules. In addition to these, according to the IPCC, ‘nonvolatile (gray) organic compounds’ are also emitted along with the following metallic particles measured in parts per billion volume: Al (Aluminium), Ti (Titanium), Cr (Chromium), Fe (Iron), Ni (Nickel), and Ba (Barium). In this paper, created under the auspices of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the particles either slough off the aircraft engine during flight, or are present in the fuel. The Macnally Institute find that nitrogen and sulfur oxides are also produced, as well as carbon monoxide.
The EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) maintains a databank of aircraft engine hydrocarbon, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide emissions. There are no datasets for other emissions including metallic particles, sulphur or other organic nonvolatile compounds. It also does not give data for other chemical reaction species that might occur in the combustion process.
What is puzzling, however, is how an aircraft at 30,000 ft as an example, can appear to have no contrail, or a very short dissipating one, whilst an aircraft at the same height just a short distance behind can have a strong, non dissipating trail, which grows, as per the Mazurov description, some kilometre wide and seemingly as far as the eye can see. This anomaly has been studied to verify height, as well as flight path of two aircraft on various occasions. What might the variables be between aircraft that create such a difference in the size of contrail?
There might be sudden thickening of the entrapment layer at the cruise height, a sudden decrease in air temperature, a reduction of wind speed, a sudden rise in humidity to near 100%, change in air mass mixture or a change in vertical motions. To have one of these variables change might be possible in a short 2-3 minute window, but to have changes across all of them suddenly seems unlikely. We postulate that the variation is likely down to the presence of more particles present allowing ice/condensation nuclei to form. How that occurs might be down to the composition of the fuel in use, or to some other mechanism of distribution.
Aerosol particulates
In a NASA 1999 paper on the analysis of aerosol particulates between 7.8 and 20.7 km in the trophosphere and stratosphere over the Pacific ocean, sulphate based particles dominated approximately 90% of total particles analysed in the upper trophosphere and lower stratosphere. Carbon-rich, crustal (mineral material from the earth’s crust), metallic and salt particles were other particle groups analysed, together with a group of sub-nanometre measurement particles which were presumed to be carbon based.
The northern hemisphere showed more than 2% of carbon in all samples taken, in stark contrast to the southern hemisphere which had only 1 sample showing this type of elevated particle count. Carbon showed greater concentrations in the trophosphere than the stratosphere. A similar pattern is found for distribution of crustal particles, of which there were considerably fewer than the other classes. Metallic particles again were mainly concentrated in the upper trophosphere, with predominantly aluminium, iron and titanium present. Salt particles were more abundant in the southern hemisphere, which is explained by the higher oceanic surface. The highest measurements of particle types in total particle count was as follows for each group: Carbon 12/500, Crustal 29/500, Metallic 26/500 and salt 15/500. The density of particles in volume of air is not given, therefore it is difficult to assess the total overall burden of particles for each group.
A nine year study from 2002 to 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , found that cirrus cloud formation was largely influenced by the presence of atmospheric mineral and metallic particles. These particles, as we have found above, act as the seeds upon which ice or condensate can form. More than 60% of the particles analysed were made up of mineral and metallic dust, with zinc, lead and copper being most common metallic particles in this study. This is direct in contrast with the metals found in the IPC paper above. Interestingly no carbon material was identified as seed particle matter within the clouds analysed and sulphur/organic material was minimal. Interestingly Wikipedia notes that cirrus cloud ice nuclei are responsible for sundogs and halos.
MIT and NOAA found that there were two types of freezing in the formation of ice around nuclei. Homogenous freezing requires a relative humidity of 150-170%, whereas heterogenous freezing can begin at 0 degrees centigrade and at a relative humidity of 100%. This paper on heterogenous freezing around Kaolin (clay) ice nuclei talks in more detail of the various mechanisms in this category of freezing. In the MIT study, clouds heavy with water were excluded, tropical tropopause clouds were allowed and measurements were taken from air traffic corridors, though no specific targeting was made of ‘contrails’.
The lack of elemental carbon in the ice nuclei in the cirrus cloud study, implies that this is not the particle that allows contrails to form, but that it is indeed either an excess of mineral dust or metallic particles in the upper trophosphere, or a combination of both. Of further note is that metallic compounds are not often found within mineral dusts, and that the metals identified were in elemental, oxide and sulphate forms. 9-26% of the more recent total ice residual particles sampled in cirrus clouds were metallic. The metals identified were Lead (Pb), Zinc (Zn), Tin (Sn), Copernicum (Cu), Silver (Ag) and Molybdenum (Mo). In previous studies industrial metals have been identified as ice nuclei. Oddly, none of these metals are listed in the IPCC paper, nor vice versa. This in itself is perplexing as the MIT paper notes its sampling has taken place in air traffic corridors, so one would expect to find elements from both lists present.
Contrails need particulates
In summary, not only can existing clouds be seeded to create desired weather effects such as rain or snow, it is possible also to create completely artificial clouds from airborne or land/sea positions. These can be the result of a continuous trail of ice/condensation nuclei combined with the correct atmospheric conditions, or it can be created using flares, rockets and other devices. Whilst materials commonly used as artifically seeded nuclei include dry ice (carbon dioxide/liquid nitrogen), sodium chloride, potassium iodide, silver iodide, propane, calcium carbide, ammonium nitrate and carbamide (or urea compound) , other seed nuclei have been identified as an array of metallic and mineral substances.
What is clear is that the cirrus clouds in air traffic corridors do not form from water vapour alone. They also do not form from carbon emissions from the burning of fuel. Visuals in the MIT paper are not available in the PDF document, but it would be interesting to see the variety of geographic sampling areas to compare to current cirrus cloud formation patterns.
The crucial question remains. Is all of the particulate matter observed in the above studies, of metals in elemental, oxide and sulfate form and a large proportion of dust particles, coming naturally from ground level industrial plumes and stacks or dust storms and volcanoes? Is it possible to eject and suspend iron particles as we have seen in the recent Saharan dust storms for prolonged lengths of time? Or does the speed at which some ‘contrail’ cirrus formation occurs, with exceptional thickness of trail and expansion rate, indicate that particles might be being added in situ?
Next up, how could cloud seeding techniques be used to create lightning, super cell storms, monster hail and other weather phenomena?