Ship tracks (clouds formed by pollution from ships) are a useful way to study how tiny particles (aerosols) affect clouds. Ship tracks are also an example of marine cloud brightening (MCB), a possible climate intervention that would add particles to clouds to reflect more sunlight and cool the Earth. Before MCB can be seriously considered, we need to understand how clouds respond to added particles over time and how well models can simulate these changes.

Satellite data usually lacks the time detail needed to study short-term changes. This study uses frequent (hourly) satellite images to closely track how individual ship tracks form and evolve under different weather conditions. This allows us to better observe how clouds quickly respond to aerosols and to build a detailed dataset for testing cloud models.

We test how well a high-resolution weather model from the UK Met Office can simulate ship tracks, and find that current model settings, especially for how cloud droplets form and evolve, don’t perform well under conditions expected in MCB. This new framework offers a way to evaluate and test models for future climate intervention research.