Help NASA Count Contrails

Bubblehead writes "NASA is looking for volunteers to count Contrails in the sky: "We're looking for special clouds called contrails. We want students, teachers and parents all over the world to report the number of contrails in the sky on October 14-15." Contrails are usually created by planes in the sky - here are a few examples."

Comments

Why?

[captnitro]

I understand this is probably a good way to get people out of the office/classroom while educating about atmospheric science -- sort of like a solar eclipse -- but why on earth counting contrails? Is there a specific reason to be counting them?

Re:Why?

[Deagol]

Perhaps it's an informal atmospheric study of some kind. I recall that due to the complete grounding of commercial/private airplanes in US air space in the immediate few days after 9/11/01, there was a unique chance to observe the weather patterns.

In fact, on this very site there was a headline about the results of the observations several months later.

Maybe this is an extension of those observations. Maybe they will correlate weather patterns across the country to the paths of airplanes.

That's just a guess, though.