Algorithm Detects Climate-Altering Ship Tracks from Satellite Data

Ship tracks over the Pacific Ocean made visible by the clouds that form around the particles in a ship’s exhaust

Researchers have developed a machine-learning algorithm to pinpoint ship tracks automatically in satellite imagery.
The researchers analyzed 1 year’s worth of nighttime observations obtained by the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite.
Ship tracks look darker than regular clouds in the mid-wave infrared, they compared the difference between the two channels and looked for...