Airplanes Unexpectedly Modify Weather

reillymj writes "Commercial airliners have a strange ability to create rain and snow when they fly through certain clouds. Scientists have known for some time that planes can make outlandish 'hole-punch' and 'canal' features in clouds. A new study has found that these odd formations are in fact evidence that planes are seeding clouds and changing local weather patterns as they fly through. In one case, researchers noted that a plane triggered several inches of snowfall directly beneath its flight path."

Comments

Tenerife

[bigtomrodney]

It is well known locally on the Canary Islands that this happens. Almost all flights come in on Tuesdays and Saturdays if I remember correctly - they're almost all package deals and charters. By the afternoon on those two days the temperature drops several degrees celsius and you'll see clouds. I even saw a dribble of rain once.

I was a complete skeptic when I was told this as I arrived, but like clockwork on those days I always saw the same thing. The crazy thing is that any other day of the week around the summer you can expect mid-to-high thirties and rarely a cloud in the sky. So maybe not scientific, but anecdotal evidence anyway.

Potential AGW support?

[OzPeter]

I'm not deep into the AGW/anti-AGW arguments (and not trying to start a flame war), but I thought that one of the anti-AGW arguments was that in general humans can't affect climate. This sort of research would seem to suggest that humans can affect climate and hence nullify some of the anti-AGW stance - or are these effects so localized that you can only state that the humans are affecting weather and not climate?