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Thursday, 8 August, 2002, 02:15 GMT 03:15 UK
Planes' vapour trails affect weather
![]() Researchers proved jet vapour makes things cooler
Scientists in the United States used the grounding of planes following last year's terrorist attacks to show how temperatures changed when flights were at a standstill. The strips of cloud left by jets in the sky have long been thought to influence the temperature. But until now, this has been impossible to measure.
They compared temperatures at 4,000 weather stations across the country with figures for the previous three decades at the same time of year. Their findings, reported in the journal Nature, show that the gap between daytime and night time temperatures was more than one degree Celsius larger than normal when flights were at a standstill. This is thought to be because the jet trails reflect sunlight and trap heat. That makes the day cooler and the night warmer where air traffic is heavy. However, the effect is almost certainly outweighed by the global warming influence of greenhouse gases, created by the burning of fuel including emissions from jet engines.
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