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Here it is:
Based on the Paraparaumu midnight 4/5 May 2007 radiosonde flight:
For low bypass jet engines (Contrail factor = 0.0340 g/kg/K)
Contrail layer:
Bottom: F305 9471m Wind: 265/25kt
Top: F563 17246m Wind: 265/27kt
I will link to the graphic later.
I think now that the engines on the B737s and A320s are classed low bypass rather than high bypass. The bottom of the contrail layer for high bypass was analysed at F300. It doesn't make a big difference because I suspect all jet flights transiting the central New Zealand area between Christchurch and Auckland do so at F340 to F360. FE users could confirm that from past observations.
I saw some contrails over Marlborough yesterday afternoon. The contrail layer was slightly higher yesterday (than it is now); it's lowering due to lowering temperatures and increasing RH at that level ahead of that weather over the South Island.
So based on this, we should see contrails today over central New Zealand. I think that they will be persistent due to the high RH, and the westerly wind will drift them eastwards.
Usual caveats and cautions for these analyses apply.
Note the balck bar on the right between F316 and F351... that means persistent contrails in that layer (based on the data and thermodynamics condiserations).
Usual caveats and cautions for these analyses apply.
Anyway here is the Contrail Analysis chart for the Paraparaumu data at midday 5 May 2007.
The bottom of the layer is higher now! Well, that's the danger of trend persistence forecasting - you'll bust when the trend changes direction!
It was quite cloudy in my part of Wellington today, especially to the west and north, and I didn't see any contrails. We'll see what tomorrow brings; the forecast on TV wasn't very optimistic for a clear sky.
If the morning dawns cloudy, I probably won't bother putting up the midnight chart. Shall we try again next weekend?
Saturday May 5th
No persistant contrails observed at 40.13S, 175.35E. Sunny day with some cloud.
Sunday May 6th
No observation possible due to full cloud cover.
Yep, Same here in wellington, veiwed from Petone.Low cloud cover most of the weekend, No trails visibile. Have been making a point of veiwing the sky from petone beach at the same time every sunday from when I spotted the 'flght to nowhere' a month ago to see if there is a flyover at that time. So far no aircraft have been spotted on that vector at that time again. No visibility yesterday though.
Yeah, nice Graph's Hector, an essential contribution.
Here are the Contrail Analysis Charts for midday Saturday 12 May, Sunday 13 May and Monday 14 May 2007 based on Paraparaumu data.
These are for low bypass jet engines which I think powers the B737s and A320s that toil away up and down the country.
Apply the usual cautions and caveats for these analyses. These are analyses and not predictions.
In the one for Monday, the sounding stopped before it reached the top of the contrail layer so I tweaked the temperature of the last level by a few degrees so that the program could actually complete the layer calculation without choking.
See https://www.mysteriousnewzealand.co.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3633#3633 for a description of what you are looking at.
On Sunday at about half past 12 I saw a contrail about half an hour old (and somewhat spread out) that probably originated on the track that goes from the east Marlborough coast to Paraparaumu where it turns left a bit. Only the portion from about Wellington to Upper Hutt was visible when I saw it. I didn't see it forming, but I am pretty sure it was the remains of a contrail.
For anyone interested in the observation of aircraft trails the last 4 days have been formative in shaping my personal veiw of this phenomonen. Lets start with saturday. According to the analysis from the atmospheric sounding data there was a very high chance of trails forming above 32,900 ft (low bypass engines).
No trails at all were observed to form during what seemed a pretty clear day. They were conspicuous by their abscence one might say.
Sunday the 13th of may should have produced trails at 32,400 and above. Hector your right, there was one lone trail which was left by a flight at 1220. The flight came from the south and continued northward straight over the city and through the hutt valley. The trail remained intact for well over an hour and drifted eastward during this time. From our vantage point at Petone beach front we could see how rapidly it moved across the sky probably being carried across the sky by a wind of 100 knots or more at altitude. Observing this trail through binoculars it appeared like a river, it was flowing internally as it made its way north east. Surrounding cirrus cloud at the same altitude seemed to be drawn toward it and branched out finally reaching the drifting trail. For the remainder of the day no more trails were observed, either out west or over the city. This struck me as unusual as there were well in excess of a dozen commercial flights over the city at the time (well, quite a few more if the arrival and departure times are taken into account from all the flights which cross over Wellingtons airspace). Why could this be?. Just one trail, when the sounding data showed the conditions were rife for many more to occur?. Stumped.
Monday morning, on my way to work at 8am, i knew straight away we were in for it. Above Avalon, a huge x hung in the sky and remnants of trails littered the airspace. That day it seems we had a new sky installed for us. Everything that crossed the sky that day left a persistant trail . Unusual formations, randomly scattered led me to believe some aircraft weren't playing by CAA rules. For want of a better term, we got hammered. By 5pm a thick seething mass hung in the sky above wellington, It stretched over the city and out toward the west like a filthy blanket. Well defined edges too. Certainly appeared as if there were tons of water held within its grasp. I have not witnessed a trail day that heavy since 16 july 2006 when the same 'dirty blanket' cloud formed over the period of 12 hours during excessively heavy trail activity. Search youtube for awakekiwi and veiw the video 'reality grommetts part one' That was a documents of the days observations. When you compare the pictures below to the ones in that video, you will see the connection immediately.
In my opinion there is no denying that trail activity has something to do with the 'cloud' (I use that term loosely) bank shown below. the contrail anlaysis doesn't add up.Today for example not one appeared, yesterday was a blitz. Something is not right. Look forward to your comments...
For anyone interested in the observation of aircraft trails the last 4 days have been formative in shaping my personal veiw of this phenomonen. Lets start with saturday. According to the analysis from the atmospheric sounding data there was a very high chance of trails forming above 32,900 ft (low bypass engines).
No trails at all were observed to form during what seemed a pretty clear day. They were conspicuous by their abscence one might say.
Sunday the 13th of may should have produced trails at 32,400 and above. Hector your right, there was one lone trail which was left by a flight at 1220. The flight came from the south and continued northward straight over the city and through the hutt valley. The trail remained intact for well over an hour and drifted eastward during this time. From our vantage point at Petone beach front we could see how rapidly it moved across the sky probably being carried across the sky by a wind of 100 knots or more at altitude. Observing this trail through binoculars it appeared like a river, it was flowing internally as it made its way north east. Surrounding cirrus cloud at the same altitude seemed to be drawn toward it and branched out finally reaching the drifting trail. For the remainder of the day no more trails were observed, either out west or over the city. This struck me as unusual as there were well in excess of a dozen commercial flights over the city at the time (well, quite a few more if the arrival and departure times are taken into account from all the flights which cross over Wellingtons airspace). Why could this be?. Just one trail, when the sounding data showed the conditions were rife for many more to occur?. Stumped.
Monday morning, on my way to work at 8am, i knew straight away we were in for it. Above Avalon, a huge x hung in the sky and remnants of trails littered the airspace. That day it seems we had a new sky installed for us. Everything that crossed the sky that day left a persistant trail . Unusual formations, randomly scattered led me to believe some aircraft weren't playing by CAA rules. For want of a better term, we got hammered. By 5pm a thick seething mass hung in the sky above wellington, It stretched over the city and out toward the west like a filthy blanket. Well defined edges too. Certainly appeared as if there were tons of water held within its grasp. I have not witnessed a trail day that heavy since 16 july 2006 when the same 'dirty blanket' cloud formed over the period of 12 hours during excessively heavy trail activity. Search youtube for awakekiwi and veiw the video 'reality grommetts part one' That was a documents of the days observations. When you compare the pictures below to the ones in that video, you will see the connection immediately.
In my opinion there is no denying that trail activity has something to do with the 'cloud' (I use that term loosely) bank shown below. the contrail anlaysis doesn't add up.Today for example not one appeared, yesterday was a blitz. Something is not right. Look forward to your comments...
Well, no one seems interested to post any comments. Or, perhaps thay are interested but havn't done so yet. I'm in the second category. I'm waiting for upper temperature analysis data for those dates (Saturday and Sunday) to become available on the NCEP-NCAR Reanalysis site at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cdc/data.ncep.reanalysis.html Couple more days...
Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 9:55 pm Post Subject: ok just for the record
ok just for the record: on the day those pics were taken (my camera) i watched multiple aircrafts laying persistent contrails leading up to the huge stationary dirty 'cloud' that hung over central wellington, it was indeed quite bizzare, it just sat there and didnt move while other clouds moved slowly accross the sky, this big black cloud remains totally stationary, to prove my point i filmed a number of 20 minute videos and when i played them back at 8x speed the big cloud didnt move and most interestingly the criss cross hatch like pattern u can see in the middle also remained exactly where it was.. this was very interesting, i also saw a number of trails been laid in the cloud, at one point a saw 3 trails been laid at once in a staggered south to north line at roughly the same altitude, they were also at lowish altitude just over the hills looking west from newtown but they were too far away to pick up on my camera clearly, however i am going to post my footage shortly on youtube once ive mastered the conversion of 20 minute file to timelapsed file, basically a program cuts out frames to make the film speed up many times so that the cloud forms can be viewed in action...
my theory or feelings on this are that when there is heavy chemtrail (yes i will call it that as thats the best term for this particular form of trail) activity and huge amounts of particulate concentration in the air that these particles form pockets that become visable as stationary signatures in the sky like ripples or waveforms, hatches or grid like formations, these shapes are the result of overlapping fields, vibrations, i dont know if they are magnetic or etheric or what but some kind of waveforms of energy that exist all around us, these waveforms become visable when there is enough particulate concentration that 'sticks' to these lines/waveforms of force, sometimes looks like ripples in water except stationary...
i have many videos of this phenomena over wellington...
Whats interesting is that even on a perfectly clear cloudless day if there was a heavy chemtrail day the day before these waveforms still appear but they are quite faint and can be noticed if you look closely at the sky.. and then at the end of the day (like today sunday 27th may) during sunset there is a huge golden glow at the horizon west as the particulate concentration is lit up by the sun as a huge haze that covers the western hills, this i feel is not due to any normal levels of pollution and it is not due to moisture in the air at low altitude as today was very dry and the sky was clear, no fog, no mist, BUT it looked 'misty' at sunset over the city due to all the rays of sun beaming through the particulate haze.. just a theory and speculation here folks..
i will post up some stills of my videos shortly tonite...
Joined: 23 Nov 2005
Posts: 1002
Location: Wellington NZ
Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 1:50 am Post Subject:
I took about 150 photos of the above described event. Im going to pass them on to elevate and he can select some to post here in support of this discussion.
On saturday 12 May 2007 atmospheric conditions were OK for the formation of contrails above about F330. I suspect that jet aircraft transit central New Zealand on the Auckland-Christchurch at F340 to F360 and usually fly the route that goes over D'Urville Island. Sometimes they use the one that goes over the western hills of Wellington. I suggest that no contrails were seen over Wellington that day because all the flights were using the western route over Marlborough, and that contrails formed there were not blown eastwards over Wellington because the wind at that level was not westerly enough.
The same applied on Sunday 13 May except that one flight chose (or was directed to) the Wellington hills route, and its contrail is the one that elevate and I reported, and others no doubt saw. This contrail drifted northeast with the wind. Again, I suggest that all the other flights between Auckland and Christchurch that day were using the Marlborough route. They would have been contrailing too, but the contrails must have been short-lived because none were seen drifting northeast towards Wellington; at least, none were reported.
Jet flights arriving at and departing from Wellington Airport are unlikely to be at contrailing altitudes while they are within observation range of the Wellington region. So don't be stumped; there may well have been some air traffic - it was all likely either too low or too far west (and not using the Wellington hills route, except for the one we saw). There may be suitable contrail conditions, but you need some jets in your part of the sky to see them.
Monday 14 May; another contrail day for jet aircraft above about F320 and they were probably fairly persistent and drifting eastwards on the 70-odd knot westerlies up there. It's no surprise that contrails were seen.
Now, about that wave cloud... Did you take the trouble to have a look at the LandCare Research satellite page for satellite pictures for that day? Have a look at these links now.
10:00am: http://satellite.landcareresearch.co.nz/noaa/?history=2007/may/md14057.txt+lp
The wave cloud starts over the Tasman Mountains. The streaks of the other high cloud shows the direction of the wind - westerly. Look at the wind profile in the midday Paraparaumu sounding - more or less constant wind direction, and steadily increasing speed with height. These are the wind conditions for mountain waves; and the other important consideration is stability. If there is enough amplitude in the wave and some moisture, you will get wave cloud. In the satellite picture some cloud can bee seen near Wellington, and no doubt some of it is induced by the western hills. There may also be some contrail fragments there, drifting and rotating in the wind field.
These mountain wave clouds move around depending on the wind direction (in relation to the axis of the mountain range), the vertical wind profile and the stability. The important thing with these clouds is that the wind blows through them. The water vapour condenses at the up stream edge and evaporates again at the down stream edge. The edges of these clouds are usually quite sharp and well defined (for the same reason that the bottom of cumulus clouds are well defined). They can extend down to about the mountain ridge altitude, and can extend to very high altitudes.
Mountain wave cloud is a fairly common sight over the Tararua and Rimutaka Ranges near Wellington, and many other parts of the country. They can be quite small in horizontal extent and take many forms. They can look like UFOs, a fillet of fish or a stack of dinner plates. The Middlemarch cloud is world famous.
Here are some links to time lapse videos of mountain wave clouds, and some other interesting effects.
I will be very interested to see your time lapse video of that cloud over Wellington on 14 May.
The point I want to drive home is that mountain wave clouds have nothing to do with contrails. Notice that the contrails in the Rocky Mountains video had no effect whatsoever on the wave clouds. The exhaust moisture may blow through and give some interesting effects - as far as the wave cloud is concerned, it is just a perturbation in the relative humidity field.
"the contrail anlaysis doesn't add up" - What do you mean? You've made that comment before. It's not supposed to "add up". It's supposed to give you an indication of whether and at what altitude range contrails are possible, which as you so well noted, it does just fine (if applied with due care).
"Today for example not one appeared, yesterday was a blitz." Check the conditions for the day - those on the previous day are no indication. Although there can be a high degree of continuity from one day to the next, in vigorous weather there are discontinuities and rapidly changing conditions.
Be careful about assigning causes to effects that are in fact unrelated. Any exhaust particulates produced in your sky yesterday have been carried well away (hundreds of kilometres) on the wind by the time today rolls around. And while I'm on causes and effects and contrails... jet exhaust condensation does not cause rain (or snow), and it does notprevent rain either.
