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Aircraft dissipation trails and “hole punch clouds” over Florida

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-13 0.63 µm visible channel images (click to play animation)

GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

McIDAS images of 1-km resolution GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm) data (above ) revealed numerous aircraft dissipation trails and “hole punch clouds” which formed over southern Florida and the adjacent waters of the Atlantic Ocean on 12 December 2014. These features are formed when an aircraft penetrates a supercooled cloud layer — the particles in the exhaust act as ice nuclei which allow the supercooled water droplets to transform into ice crystals.

A comparison of 250-meter resolution Terra MODIS True Color and False Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from the SSEC MODIS Today site (below) confirmed that the clouds within the dissipation trails and hole punch features had glaciated — ice crystal clouds appear as shades of cyan in the False Color image, in contrast to supercooled water droplet clouds which appear as varying shades of white.

Terra MODIS true-color and false-color images

Terra MODIS True Color and False Color images [click to enlarge]

Categories: Aviation, GOES-13, MODIS, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Terra