Earth  ID: 11195

Ship Tracks Off North America

Story by Adam P. Voiland Released on March 14, 2013
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A weather satellite captures spectacular views of swirling ship track clouds.
Though they resemble airplane contrails, it was actually ships churning across open water that left this cluster of serpentine cloud trails lingering over the eastern Pacific Ocean. The narrow clouds, known as ship tracks, form when water vapor condenses around small particles of pollution released into the air as part of ship exhaust. Some of these particles are soluble in water and serve as seeds around which cloud droplets form. Clouds infused with ship exhaust end up having more and smaller droplets than unpolluted clouds. As a result, light hitting these exhaust-infused clouds scatters in many directions, making them appear brighter than standard marine clouds, which are typically seeded by naturally-occurring particles of sea salt. Watch the video to see how wind patterns change the shape of these clouds over the course of a day.
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The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-West) observed these ship track clouds throughout the day on Jan. 15, 2013.
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Ship tracks show up frequently in satellite imagery. This view was acquired by a NASA satellite on Jan. 15, 2013.
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The MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of ship tracks off the coast of California on Jan. 21, 2008.
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NASA's Terra satellite spotted these ship tracks off the coast of Alaska on Mar. 4, 2009.

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NASA Earth Observatory

Story Credits

Visualizer/Animator:
Robert Simmon (Sigma Space Corporation)

Lead Writer:
Adam P. Voiland (Sigma Space Corporation)

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA Earth Observatory

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https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11195

Keywords:
SVS >> App
NASA Science >> Earth