I used to dismiss https://www.ingersolllockwood.com/ but now I think it could be hugely important.
Used to think "it's all part of the show" was exaggerated and silly, but now I find myself wondering if white hats have their hand in nearly every major news story.
Going the other way...
I'm embarrassed to admit I followed Lin Wood during the first part of 2021. Now certain he's a fraud.
Until late last year I was convinced the military was about to roll in anytime a big story broke. Now I see that sort of thinking as counterproductive hopium that leads only to chronic letdown and fatigue.
If this thread catches on I'll come up with more.
But one would expect the ratio of persistent to dissipating to be reasonably consistent. It may or may not be aerosols. It could be a secret high-flying drone fleet that flies in the "always persistent trails" area of the appleman chart.
Weather conditions are constantly changing. Planes fly at different altitudes. So why would it be consistent?
Two planes could fly the same direction, at different times or different altitudes, and the resulting contrail could be different in appearance or persistence.
Planes could simply be flying in the 'persistent' section of the chart now, much higher than before or it could be a massive fleet of drones flying higher than planes. I haven't seen evidence of that but if you have then I would like to see it. Otherwise I would expect a reasonable consistency over several decades in the persistent to dissipating ratio.
You understand what I mean? Up till around the late 90's persistent trails were extremely rare while dissipating trails were merely rare. You wouldn't see dissipating trails anywhere near every day in summer in Michigan. Much more rarely would there be a persistent trail. Since then dissipating are still about as rare as they ever were but persistent is now the norm. In the obama era there seemed to be hundreds of persistent trails nearly every day. It went down in the Trump era. I don't think changing weather patterns (climate) does that. Maybe you could shed some light on it.
Think I get what you're saying. My observations don't really match though. I've never noticed a change in contrails. Saw them as a kid in the 80s/90s and they look the same today.
I still say increased air traffic is a big part of why more people notice contrails. Don't have numbers on hand but I'm sure traffic is up several hundred percent from the 90's.
Weather is such a wild variable, with different regions also experiencing different patterns. The jet stream moves around, which could account for some of the trends in persistence you've noticed. Also there are long term weather changes (natural cyclical changes, not manmade global warming).
To be clear, I believe governments around the world have sprayed stuff from airplanes in effort to accomplish a variety of things. But the average contrail is just a contrail.
NASA had information about contrails that was from an older sudy confirming that dissipating is rare and persistent is rarer still. From my observation in SE MI at its maximum the frequency of persistent trails increased to thousands of times more than in the 70's and 80's while dissipating trails perhaps increased a modest amount at most.