It’s water droplets. Jet fuel is made out of hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons have lots of hydrogen atoms. Burning hydrogen generates water vapor. The air up high is really cold, so the water vapor condenses into droplets. Same thing when your car smokes during the winter.
The water vapor from the plane is now essentially a cloud. Like clouds, it will stick around or dissipate depending on the local weather conditions. Wind currents and low relative humidity will cause them to dissipate faster.
Contrails or “condensate trails”, are just trails of clouds left behind by planes.
They form under the right atmospheric conditions where the sudden pressure change caused by the plane engines causes the water vapor in the air to rapidly condensate and form clouds. Like Yknow in videos when a fighter jet is going super sonic and it has a cloud flickering around it? Thats the same thing. Water rapidly condensing due to the rapid pressure changes.
How long they hang around again depends on the atmospheric conditions and how easily that cloud can “dissolve” again or be blown away.
Air at very high altitude is thin, below freezing temperatures and low in moisture. When a jet engine burns fuel it releases carbon dioxide and water. The contrails you see behind the jet engines are water vapor particles that have rapidly condensed and form a small cloud trailing the aircraft due to the dry and cold conditions there.
When you combust fuel, it produces water. You can often see it dripping out of the exhausts of cars. In a turbofan engine, found on most commercial jets, this water is excreted as water vapour. The air is very thin, so cant hold all this water vapour, so tiny droplets form that are suspended in the air. This is the same as a cloud, and so why it looks like one, just following the paths of the engines. It fades as weather dissipates it, and the speed will depend on the wind, humidity, temperature and more at the altitude theyre at.
/rj Its the government putting chemicals in the sky to turn the frogs gay and mind control us all.
The reason for the streaks is that water is one of the products of combustion. As the plane burns fuel, it exhausts water into the air.
As the other person commented, that’s when temperature and humidity come into play. Lower temperatures and higher humidities contribute to the size and duration of the contrails
You know how when you idle in your car for a while, you see a puddle of water under your exhaust? Or if it’s really cold, everyone’s car exhaust makes little white clouds? Jet engines do the same thing, but when they’re really high up, it’s really cold and they freeze
One major byproduct of burning kerosene or any organic fuel, is water.
These jets spit water vapour (an invisible gas at 600° – 1000° C) into the atmosphere where it is very cold- around -40° C. The water turns to ice crystals almost immediately.
What happens next depends upon the conditions of that part of the sky, so it might either evaporate back into the air by sublimation from solid water to gaseous water with no liquid state in between, it might cause supercooled water in the atmosphere to nucleate on the ice crystals and seed more cloud, or it might be dissipated by wind and the turbulence left behind from the aircraft.
From UCAR, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research:
>The white streaks you see coming off high-flying jet airplanes are called contrails, which is short for condensation trail. Contrails are clouds that form when water vapor condenses and freezes around small particles (aerosols) in aircraft exhaust. The water vapor comes from the air around the plane and the exhaust of the aircraft. These contrails can become human-made cirrus clouds.
>Contrails last longer when there is a greater amount of water in the air.
>The amount of moisture present in the atmosphere determines what type of contrail can form.
>There are three types of contrails: short-lived, persistent non-spreading, and persistent spreading.
>A short-lived contrail forms immediately behind an airplane as a bright white line that lasts for only a short while if the air is somewhat moist (as compared to air that is very moist).
>A persistent non-spreading contrail forms when the air is very moist and will stay in the sky long after the airplane has flown out of sight. It can last for a few minutes or longer than a day, and it keeps its shape of a thin line.
>A persistent spreading contrail* also forms in very moist air but spreads out across the sky. It grows wider and fuzzier as time passes. Sometimes contrails will actually take on the characteristics of a natural cirrus cloud and no longer look like contrails, thus becoming human-made clouds.
>When all of the water in the clouds evaporates the contrail disappears.
Or….. Contrails are chemicals sprayed by the government, the Illuminati, the New World Order, Satanists, space aliens, or liberals to keep us content and quiet.
The are the same white stuff that comes out of car exhaust on cold morning. All combustion produce water and co2. When atmospheric conditions are correct, the water vapor become visible. This has been true since WWII to modern jets.
Depends on the chemicals used, some are for brainwashing to make you forget things “they” dont want you to remember. Some are to manipulate the weather so “they” can influence the stock market and make trillions. Some are to make people believe these are just water clouds from the exhaust. Dont let these government drones fool you. /S
Finally a question I can actually answer (doing my PhD on this topic from an aircraft engine perspective):
Plane engines burn fuel, which is made of hydrocarbons. This produces water vapour in the exhaust plume.
The temperature high up is very cold. The exhaust air cools rapidly and the water vapour condenses (forms liquid drops) on the particles in the exhaust plume and the atmosphere (aromates, soot etc)
Due to the cold temperature, the tiny liquid droplets freeze and become tiny ice crystals (this is what you usually see behind planes -> as someone else already mentioned: Contrails or condensation trails)
If the atmosphere in which the plane is flying is supersatured with respect to ice (kind of a complicated concept, imagine that there is a lot of ice “vapour” in the air), this atmospheric ice will ”bond” to the just formed ice crystals from the exhaust, causing them to grow bigger. IF the air is not supersaturated with respect to ice, the contrail will just disappear again soon after forming, because the ice crystals are too small and melt or drop to warmer atmospheric layers.
Fun fact: As someone else already mentioned (I am quite late to this 😀 ), these persistant contrails have a significant heating effect on the atmosphere, as they reflect long-wave thermal radiation back to earth (they can also cool, due to the Albedo effect although the overall effect is net-positive with regards to warming. Current estimates range between 30-70 % of the climate effect from the aviation industry is just from these persistent contrails. One study I read suggests, that the heating effect (radiative forcing) is quite a lot higher than the models say, which would make the effect even more significant. Really cool subject, if you have questions feel free to dm me 🙂
Watched someone get into a hysterical argument with a pilot in my extended family over her belief that they are chemtrails. Was quite a thing to witness
Don’t believe the misinformation bots here in the comments. Those are government planes, and they spray chemicals on us to keep us in line. I myself wear a gas mask 24/7 so I don’t breathe them in. Once you stop inhaling it, you start to see actual reality.
Exactly. And because it wasnt total shutdown, some regions had not so strict restrictions on earth, some was closed totally, some, like oceans, have no traffic at all we get all kind of various data with different conditions.
Jet exhaust includes water. Same reason that sometimes when you start your car (especially in cold weather) water shoots out the exhaust – the combustion process in the engine produces water.
Up high in the sky that water condenses into a small cloud. How long it lasts depends on the weather which some others have already mentioned.
In certain states and some areas of the country, some of our more intellectually challenged Americans believe that contrails are actually “chemtrails,” which are allegedly chemicals or biological agents being secretly sprayed into the atmosphere by governments or other organizations, and claim these chemicals can be used for mind control, population control, or weather manipulation. These people argue that contrails are part of a secret global effort to manipulate the climate or the weather. They believe governments or organizations might be using these trails to artificially cool the planet (via a process known as solar radiation management) or create weather phenomena like droughts or floods, or that the liberals use them to send hurricanes to wreak havoc on conservative people. Some state have looked into legislation around contrails to prohibit them from being used as described above. I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t just get the scientific explanation , because who needs science anyway?
They are spraying chemicals to brainwash us and control the weather. These are “facts” I’ve “learned” from some very “smart” people I’ve been “fortunate” to encounter. /s
Hot jet exhaust in the cold of the high altitude causes water in the air to condense and form clouds.
Very narrow and long clouds.
They disperse over time depending on the altitude.
A lower altitude jet will leave contrails that last less time because the warmer air of the lower atmosphere is closer to the temperature of the contrails.
It’s basically rhe same as when your windows fog up in your car.
Comments
Someone more educated can tell you what it is, but I’ll tell you what it isn’t: “chemtrails”.
Edit: I know it’s easy to mock people that believe this, but please try to remember that they’re unwell and need help.
Those white streaks are called, “condensation trails”, or, “contrails” for short.
They persist or dissipate based on the temperature and moisture content of the layer of air they’re flying through.
If the air is cold and moist, the jet exhaust will form ice crystals that may last or even grow.
If the air is warmer or dryer, or both, the water in the exhaust will not form ice crystals, and dissipate faster.
I have heard that you can use the length and persistence of contrails to predict the coming weather, but I don’t know if that is true or not.
It’s water droplets. Jet fuel is made out of hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons have lots of hydrogen atoms. Burning hydrogen generates water vapor. The air up high is really cold, so the water vapor condenses into droplets. Same thing when your car smokes during the winter.
The water vapor from the plane is now essentially a cloud. Like clouds, it will stick around or dissipate depending on the local weather conditions. Wind currents and low relative humidity will cause them to dissipate faster.
Contrails or “condensate trails”, are just trails of clouds left behind by planes.
They form under the right atmospheric conditions where the sudden pressure change caused by the plane engines causes the water vapor in the air to rapidly condensate and form clouds. Like Yknow in videos when a fighter jet is going super sonic and it has a cloud flickering around it? Thats the same thing. Water rapidly condensing due to the rapid pressure changes.
How long they hang around again depends on the atmospheric conditions and how easily that cloud can “dissolve” again or be blown away.
Air at very high altitude is thin, below freezing temperatures and low in moisture. When a jet engine burns fuel it releases carbon dioxide and water. The contrails you see behind the jet engines are water vapor particles that have rapidly condensed and form a small cloud trailing the aircraft due to the dry and cold conditions there.
When you combust fuel, it produces water. You can often see it dripping out of the exhausts of cars. In a turbofan engine, found on most commercial jets, this water is excreted as water vapour. The air is very thin, so cant hold all this water vapour, so tiny droplets form that are suspended in the air. This is the same as a cloud, and so why it looks like one, just following the paths of the engines. It fades as weather dissipates it, and the speed will depend on the wind, humidity, temperature and more at the altitude theyre at.
/rj Its the government putting chemicals in the sky to turn the frogs gay and mind control us all.
The reason for the streaks is that water is one of the products of combustion. As the plane burns fuel, it exhausts water into the air.
As the other person commented, that’s when temperature and humidity come into play. Lower temperatures and higher humidities contribute to the size and duration of the contrails
You know how when you idle in your car for a while, you see a puddle of water under your exhaust? Or if it’s really cold, everyone’s car exhaust makes little white clouds? Jet engines do the same thing, but when they’re really high up, it’s really cold and they freeze
Isn’t there a big conspiracy theory about these too?
Its allergens that allergy companies pay planes to dump so they sell more allergy meds.
One major byproduct of burning kerosene or any organic fuel, is water.
These jets spit water vapour (an invisible gas at 600° – 1000° C) into the atmosphere where it is very cold- around -40° C. The water turns to ice crystals almost immediately.
What happens next depends upon the conditions of that part of the sky, so it might either evaporate back into the air by sublimation from solid water to gaseous water with no liquid state in between, it might cause supercooled water in the atmosphere to nucleate on the ice crystals and seed more cloud, or it might be dissipated by wind and the turbulence left behind from the aircraft.
From UCAR, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research:
>The white streaks you see coming off high-flying jet airplanes are called contrails, which is short for condensation trail. Contrails are clouds that form when water vapor condenses and freezes around small particles (aerosols) in aircraft exhaust. The water vapor comes from the air around the plane and the exhaust of the aircraft. These contrails can become human-made cirrus clouds.
>Contrails last longer when there is a greater amount of water in the air.
>The amount of moisture present in the atmosphere determines what type of contrail can form.
>There are three types of contrails: short-lived, persistent non-spreading, and persistent spreading.
>A short-lived contrail forms immediately behind an airplane as a bright white line that lasts for only a short while if the air is somewhat moist (as compared to air that is very moist).
>A persistent non-spreading contrail forms when the air is very moist and will stay in the sky long after the airplane has flown out of sight. It can last for a few minutes or longer than a day, and it keeps its shape of a thin line.
>A persistent spreading contrail* also forms in very moist air but spreads out across the sky. It grows wider and fuzzier as time passes. Sometimes contrails will actually take on the characteristics of a natural cirrus cloud and no longer look like contrails, thus becoming human-made clouds.
>When all of the water in the clouds evaporates the contrail disappears.
Or….. Contrails are chemicals sprayed by the government, the Illuminati, the New World Order, Satanists, space aliens, or liberals to keep us content and quiet.
Take your pick. I know what RFK Jr., the new leader of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, believes.
They are left over evidence of Jewish Aliens controlling Space Lasers to control our minds of course!
The are the same white stuff that comes out of car exhaust on cold morning. All combustion produce water and co2. When atmospheric conditions are correct, the water vapor become visible. This has been true since WWII to modern jets.
https://web.fscj.edu/Milczanowski/psc/eleven/combust.html
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/II_World_War_contrails.jpg
Didn’t Florida try to ban “chemtrails”?
Chemtrails. Google it. Very enlightening. Government doesn’t want you to know man. Their bots will down vote me
The ones that last usually contain some chemical mixture that is being sprayed into the atmosphere. It’s called geo engineering or stratospheric aerosol injections, look it up. And yes it’s actually happening. Here is the government form to fill out to spray your own chemtrails
https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWAQ/Weather_Modification_Project/Administrative/WxMod_Form17-4.pdf
Those are basically clouds.
Water from the humid air forms water drops on the cold metal of the wings and body. Which is than blown away from the wind.
They stay longer or shorter depending on the weather conditions, windspeed, humidity, temperatures….
Depends on the chemicals used, some are for brainwashing to make you forget things “they” dont want you to remember. Some are to manipulate the weather so “they” can influence the stock market and make trillions. Some are to make people believe these are just water clouds from the exhaust. Dont let these government drones fool you. /S
The jet engines suck in some air in the front and squeeze it into clouds out the back.
According to the 5 Guys employee smoking cigarettes on his lunch break, those are chemtrails.
Finally a question I can actually answer (doing my PhD on this topic from an aircraft engine perspective):
Plane engines burn fuel, which is made of hydrocarbons. This produces water vapour in the exhaust plume.
The temperature high up is very cold. The exhaust air cools rapidly and the water vapour condenses (forms liquid drops) on the particles in the exhaust plume and the atmosphere (aromates, soot etc)
Due to the cold temperature, the tiny liquid droplets freeze and become tiny ice crystals (this is what you usually see behind planes -> as someone else already mentioned: Contrails or condensation trails)
If the atmosphere in which the plane is flying is supersatured with respect to ice (kind of a complicated concept, imagine that there is a lot of ice “vapour” in the air), this atmospheric ice will ”bond” to the just formed ice crystals from the exhaust, causing them to grow bigger. IF the air is not supersaturated with respect to ice, the contrail will just disappear again soon after forming, because the ice crystals are too small and melt or drop to warmer atmospheric layers.
These (now called persistent) contrails can stay in the atmosphere for hours, which is when you then see these long white streaks. They can also grow into proper cirrus cloud layers –> check out this photo https://www.dlr.de/en/media/publications/magazines/all-digital-magazines/dlrmagazine-175/a-future-without-contrails/satellite-images-of-contrails/@@images/image-2000-230c37557cd4715fe259312bcae46896.jpeg
Fun fact: As someone else already mentioned (I am quite late to this 😀 ), these persistant contrails have a significant heating effect on the atmosphere, as they reflect long-wave thermal radiation back to earth (they can also cool, due to the Albedo effect although the overall effect is net-positive with regards to warming. Current estimates range between 30-70 % of the climate effect from the aviation industry is just from these persistent contrails. One study I read suggests, that the heating effect (radiative forcing) is quite a lot higher than the models say, which would make the effect even more significant. Really cool subject, if you have questions feel free to dm me 🙂
It’s the same reason why your breath is visible on cold days. Water vapor condenses in cold air.
The condensation trails are literally just clouds.
How long the trails stay depends on the humidity of the surrounding air.
The higher the humidity the longer the trail stays.
Watched someone get into a hysterical argument with a pilot in my extended family over her belief that they are chemtrails. Was quite a thing to witness
Don’t believe the misinformation bots here in the comments. Those are government planes, and they spray chemicals on us to keep us in line. I myself wear a gas mask 24/7 so I don’t breathe them in. Once you stop inhaling it, you start to see actual reality.
Exactly. And because it wasnt total shutdown, some regions had not so strict restrictions on earth, some was closed totally, some, like oceans, have no traffic at all we get all kind of various data with different conditions.
Jet exhaust includes water. Same reason that sometimes when you start your car (especially in cold weather) water shoots out the exhaust – the combustion process in the engine produces water.
Up high in the sky that water condenses into a small cloud. How long it lasts depends on the weather which some others have already mentioned.
Nice. Thank you for the photos for comparison, and it seems so obvious now.
In certain states and some areas of the country, some of our more intellectually challenged Americans believe that contrails are actually “chemtrails,” which are allegedly chemicals or biological agents being secretly sprayed into the atmosphere by governments or other organizations, and claim these chemicals can be used for mind control, population control, or weather manipulation. These people argue that contrails are part of a secret global effort to manipulate the climate or the weather. They believe governments or organizations might be using these trails to artificially cool the planet (via a process known as solar radiation management) or create weather phenomena like droughts or floods, or that the liberals use them to send hurricanes to wreak havoc on conservative people. Some state have looked into legislation around contrails to prohibit them from being used as described above. I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t just get the scientific explanation , because who needs science anyway?
They are spraying chemicals to brainwash us and control the weather. These are “facts” I’ve “learned” from some very “smart” people I’ve been “fortunate” to encounter. /s
You know how when it is cold you can see your breath?
You know how the higher altitude you are the colder it gets?
A jet engine is basically a giant mouth, constantly exhaling as it moves across the sky.
Why do they stay in a straight line for so long? It’s like there is no wind at that altitude.
Hot jet exhaust in the cold of the high altitude causes water in the air to condense and form clouds.
Very narrow and long clouds.
They disperse over time depending on the altitude.
A lower altitude jet will leave contrails that last less time because the warmer air of the lower atmosphere is closer to the temperature of the contrails.
It’s basically rhe same as when your windows fog up in your car.