Image Description – Ships Trails

These ships’ trails in the North Pacific were created by sulfur in ship fuels. When burned, sulfur creates aerosol sulfates that act as condensation nuclei for water vapor, creating or enhancing cloud formation in an identical way that jets create condensation trails with one difference. Condensation trails at jet aircraft altitudes create warming, like a blanket that holds in the heat energy. At low altitudes like from ship exhausts, the clouds reflect sunlight harmlessly back into space without creating heat. This is literally geoengineering and it is something humankind has been doing since we first began burning fossil fuels as sulfur occurs wherever there are fossil fuels. This sulfur also causes respiratory ailment and because of this we have created regulations across the globe to limit sulfur in fossil fuels, and as an unintended consequence, we have limited the cooling capacity of these low altitude sulfur emissions that create clouds. This engineered cooling is called tropospheric aerosols. Today, sulfur burned in fossil fuels has masked about a third of warming that humans have created with emissions of excess greenhouse gases. It is also important to note that the free sulfur aerosols anywhere there is less moisture, are called “bright aerosols.” This means they naturally reflect light, and in the case of incoming sunlight, they reflect it back into space without it causing warming. When aerosols are released high in the atmosphere, like with volcanoes and often with jet aircraft, these aerosols cool by reflection and this engineered solutions is known as stratospheric aerosol cooling.