Graduation internship: Accuracy of Simple Shape Approximations for Contrail Evolution

Background Contrails, or condensation trails, are streams of condensed water vapour that form behind aircraft. Accurate modelling of contrails is crucial for understanding their impact on the environment and aviation. Shortly after formation, a contrail interacts with the wake vortices of the aircraft, significantly affecting its initial shape, the total ice crystal number, and their size and number distributions. The state of the contrail after the vortex phase has a considerable impact on the evolution of the contrail and its climate impact. Currently, the contrail cross-section after the vortex phase is often modelled as a Gaussian ellipse, which is tracked and updated throughout the contrail diffusion phase.…