If you have a habit of perusing satellite imagery of the world’s oceans—and who doesn’t, really?—you might get lucky and spot long, thin clouds, like white slashes across the sea. In some regions, like off the West Coast of the United States, the slashes might crisscross, creating huge hash marks. That’s a peculiar phenomenon known as a ship track.
As cargo ships chug along, flinging sulfur into the atmosphere, they actually trace their routes for satellites to see. That’s because those pollutants rise into low-level clouds and plump them up by acting as nuclei that attract water vapor, which also brightens the
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