RESEARCH BRIEFINGS

01 April 2026

The contrail clouds formed by jet engines contribute to global warming. In-flight measurements of the particles emitted and contrails produced by a passenger jet show that contrails are formed through different mechanisms, depending on the soot-emission level and the fuel composition, potentially reshaping our understanding of the climate impact of aviation.

This is a summary of: Voigt, C. et al . Substantial aircraft contrail formation at low soot emission levels. Nature 652 , 112–118 (2026) .

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00931-z

‘Expert opinion’ and the figure are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

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