"How WW2 Bomber raids affected English Weather" Topic

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This is too cool to not Tango.

Dense and persistent condensation trails or contrails were produced by daytime US Army Air Force (USAAF) bombing raids, flown from England to Europe during World War II (WW2). These raids occurred in years when civilian air travel was rare, giving a predominantly contrail-free background sky, in a period when there were more meteorological observations taken across England than at any time before or since. The aircraft involved in the raids entered formation at contrail-forming altitudes (generally over 16 000 ft, approximately 5 km) over a relatively small part of southeast England before flying on to their target. This formation strategy provides us a unique opportunity to carry out multiple observation-based comparisons of adjacent, same day, well-defined overflown and non-over-flown regions.

We compile evidence from archived meteorological data, such as Met Office daily weather reports and individual station meteorological registers, together with historical aviation information from USAAF and Royal Air Force (RAF) tactical mission reports. We highlight a number of potential dates for study and demonstrate, for one of these days, a marked difference in the amount of high cloud cover, and a statistically significant (0.8 °C) difference in the 07:00–13:00 UTC temperature range when comparing data from highly overflown stations to those upwind of the flight path on the same day. Although one event cannot provide firm conclusions regarding the effect of contrails on climate, this study demonstrates that the wealth of observational data associated with WW2 bombing missions allows detailed investigation of meteorological perturbations because of aviation-induced cloudiness.

Restricted access, requires payment, Mad Mike now Sad Mike. However I have always wondered if all the WWI & WWII accounts of worst weather in "X"number of years could be tied to the massive artillery barrages affecting local weather patterns.

Sorry about that I forgot to check to see if it was an open access paper.

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However I have always wondered if all the WWI & WWII accounts of worst weather in "X"number of years could be tied to the massive artillery barrages affecting local weather patterns.

I haven't seen a paper on that subject, however to be fair I haven't looked too deeply at the literature. That being said, my gut says not really. The main difference between a massive artillery barrage vs nuclear winter is that nukes exploding over cities create firestorms that propells the smoke plume along with dust and other particulates into the stratosphere.

Look at what happened during the Kuwaiti oil fires. The oil-fire was too diffused/too small to create a pyrocumulonimbus cloud system, therefore the soot didn't wasn't lofted into stratosphere. Therefore the cooling effect of the soot was localized instead of being a global phenomenon. From what I read in the literature, the cut-off for full-on nuclear winter appears to be at about 100 city-sized firestorms.

Oh, and to cut-off an arguement at it's knees, Carl Sagan's paper on nuclear winter ( link ) has aged well, and is consistent with modern climate modelling ( link )

Where Sagan was said to have "fudged the science" in the name of nuclear dismantlement was his public speeches and writing was due to his decision to focus on the worst possible outcome, rather than nuancing his communications with most likely and lower end estimates(which was present in the TTAPS paper). (See Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway for further details and context)

I was off Kuwait during the oil fires. It was like you were in a big unlit tent with just the bottoms rolled up, letting in light.

Murvill: thanks for that incredibly vivid visual image!

Out in the Gulf we were getting black rain – depression compounded!