Ship Tracks

Ship tracks, which are characterized by recurring streak-line patterns of increased cloud albedo under certain environmental conditions are often used as an illustrative example for such aerosol-cloud effects. They are predominantly observed in stratocumulus regions with relatively shallow boundary layers along the worlds major shipping corridors. Although the radiative effect of ship emissions on a global scale is likely to be insignificant (Schreier et al. 2007), they provide an ideal test bed for studying aerosol-cloud effects of warm clouds. The ships exhaust particles are injected into pristine regions of very low aerosol concentrations, providing a large perturbation to the system where aerosol effects are distinguishable.

We address how well we can simulate the processes involved in ship-track formation at the regional scale using the COSMO model.