Contrails over the Yellow Sea (MODIS 2020-01-26)

The numerous types of clouds that grow and move around Earth are constantly shaped by the atmosphere, land, and ocean. They can even be shaped by human activity. Condensation trails, or contrails, are a type of cloud that forms in nearly the same way as naturally occurring cirrus clouds. At high altitudes, where it’s cold enough—at least -39°C (-38°F)—water vapor can easily freeze onto small particles in the atmosphere and form clouds. When the phenomenon involves particles from the exhaust of aircraft, the resulting long, narrow cloud is categorized as a contrail. On January 24, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the skies over the Yellow Sea. The atmosphere in this region often wears a veil of haze and cloud. On this particular day, the colors of sediment in the blue water, sweeping strokes of cloud across the sky, especially between China (east) and North Korea), and haze created a complex scene. And the picture became even more complex with numerous contrails crisscrossing the sky over the Yellow Sea. Each contrail marks the passage of an aircraft in the busy skies. Many of the contrails

Date

January 2, 2020

Mapmaker / publisher

MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

Archive

Wikimedia Commons

Type

map

Original size

2,086 × 1,647 pixels

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