Word: cirrus
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...travel grow rapidly, scientists are investigating claims that they may double the warming effect because of the altitude at which they're emitted. As jets soar they leave behind contrails, vapor threads of condensation that can persist for hours, especially in colder areas, and behave like high-altitude cirrus clouds. Those clouds seem to have a net warming effect, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Planes also create ozone, a greenhouse gas that has a stronger warming effect at high altitudes than low. The science is still being nailed down, but the side effects of high-altitude emissions could double...
...people onboard the Cirrus SR20 plane, Lidle and a flight instructor, were killed when the state-of-the-art plane plowed into a 42-story New York apartment building. Though initial reports indicated that the plane issued a distress call, in a late-night press conference Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board did not report such a call. Hersman said the NTSB was just beginning its investigation, including looking at the aircraft, the engine and the actions of the pilot...
...Ironically, the plane's unique emergency equipment was useless in this case. Each Cirrus plane has a large parachute that can be deployed to allow a plane in trouble to float safely to the ground. Several Cirrus planes and their pilots have been saved by their parachutes, and the chute apparently gave Lidle an impressive amount of confidence in his $187,000 plane. "The whole plane has a parachute on it," Lidle told the New York Times last month. "Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land...
...glum, cardigan-swaddled Catherine doesn't sound like the right kind of role for Paltrow, whose most successful movies give her the sort of sweetly wispy presence one associates with cirrus clouds. This is more the forbidding thundercloud area of Mary-Louise Parker (who originated the role on Broadway and who some thought was unfairly overlooked for the movie). Paltrow was in the later London version of the play, directed by her old Shakespeare in Love comrade John Madden, and two years after was cast in his film version...
...That's exactly what occurred in 2001, between Sept. 11 and 14, when U.S. air travel was shut down following the terrorist attacks. During that period, the swing between daytime highs and nighttime lows sometimes measured more than twice as much as usual, perhaps owing to a reduction in cirrus clouds that allowed collected solar heat to radiate away. New and larger passenger planes might exacerbate the problem, but it is the frequency of flights that matters most. One way to tackle warming would be to have planes fly roughly 25% lower--altitudes less conducive to cirrus-cloud formation...