Ten thousand cloud makers: Is airplane exhaust altering earth`s climate?
The small Saberliner jet carrying Bruce E. Anderson rolled almost completely upside down, when his plane entered the wake of a DC-8 jet just a few miles ahead. The backwash-a tight horizontal tornado whirling at more than 100 miles per hour-spun the light Saberliner 140{degrees} and sent it into a dive, causing Anderson, his food, and everything else in the plane to go temporarily weightless. When they recovered, they nosed up behind the DC-8 for some more punishment. Although it sounds like military flight training, Anderson and his colleagues were actually conducting a high-tech emissions check-measuring the gases and particles spewing out of jet engines. Their mission resembles the pollution tests that states routinely perform on cars, except that the NASA-run experiment happened at 400 miles per hour, 40,000 feet above the ground. And whereas car emissions are well understood, scientists have little information on the pollution from jet engines. Toward that end, NASA gathered four planes and 120 scientists in Kansas during April and May to make the most detailed measurements yet of jet engine exhaust at cruising altitude. This project and future ones are addressing the question of whether aircraft emissions are increasing the number of clouds and are perturbing atmospheric chemistry, both of which could affect weather on earth. This article describes the project, what lead to it, what has been learned and where it is going in the future.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 417514
- Journal Information:
- Science News, Vol. 150, Issue 1; Other Information: PBD: 6 Jul 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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