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Old 21-June-2005, 02:19 PM
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Meteora Meteora is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pteranodon
5) On/off trails occur because the plane flies through pockets of dryer air.
Maybe. I think it's more likely that in this case, the plane is flying through horizontal "rolls" in the atmosphere. Those rolls are caused by vertical wind shear and result in up & down motion. Downward motion tends to dry the air (due to dry-adiabatic* heating and no change in moisture content), while upward motion tends to make it more humid (same reason, in reverse). Even on a fairly small scale, if the air is near saturation, this can lead to the sort of on/off trails you're describing.

Otherwise, the list looks good... except that I have no idea what SRMs are (maybe that's just because I just finished a midnight shift at work and the brain is barely functional).... :-s
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* - When air descends, the increase in pressure (alone) causes the temperature to rise, according to the Ideal Gas Law. Raising the temperature, while holding moisture content the same, results in lower relative humidity. Ascending air undergoes the opposite effect until it reaches saturation, then heat exchanges due to condensation make things more complicated.
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