Design of Ice Super Saturated Region (ISSR) visualization tool for contrail planning

Hot exhaust from jet airliners generate condensation trails when the appropriate atmospheric conditions exist. These high altitude “clouds” reflect 23% of incoming shortwave radiation back into space, but also reflect 33% of outgoing longwave radiation back to Earth. In this way, anthropogenic (i.e. human made) contrails have a net warming effect. Under the auspices of future government regulations, airlines could earn traffic flow management slot prioritization credits for flying flight plans that lay persistent contrails in the morning (to block incoming shortwave radiation) and avoid laying persistent contrails in the evening (to allow longwave radiation to escape). This paper describes a method for processing publicly available weather forecast data to identify the location of Ice Super Saturated Regions where persistent contrails will form. The ISSRs statistics and a 3-D visualization of the ISSR over the CONUS are provided. The implications of this information and the limitations of the method are discussed.