‘Chemtrails’ consipracy pushed as Florida debates weather modification ban

A Florida state senator is pushing for a ban on weather manipulation activities, triggering social media posts evoking the “chemtrails” conspiracy about toxic substances released from aircraft. But experts, including the agency that released the footage shared in the posts, say the clip shows contrails – or condensation – from planes, and that the widely circulated claims of intentional chemical dispersion are baseless.

“STRANGE SKIES Above FLORIDA!” warns a November 30, 2024 X post. It includes a video of satellite footage highlighting “lines in the sky” moving west to east across the state. The narrator says: “Take a look at the state of Florida, this is not the only area this is happening but it is the most potent and obvious area.”

The same clip was shared on Instagram. 

A similar claim about “geoengineering” in Florida using a satellite image, was made on X in late November, as State Senator Ileana Garcia of Miami introduced legislation banning “weather modification activities” (archived here).

The posts follow a string of debunked social media warnings about “chemtrails” — a long-running conspiracy theory that alleges that white streaks in the sky left from aircraft are toxic chemicals or biological weapons.

Chemtrails are “probably one of the most common” conspiracies faced by the meteorology community online, US National Weather Service meteorologist, Da’Vel Reed Johnson told AFP.

Several US agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, have explained the facts about contrails or “condensation trails” to debunk the falsehoods shared on social media (archived here).

Contrails are triggered by planes when they fly through a moist upper atmosphere and release additional water vapor from engine combustion as well as soot and metal particles into the air (archived here and here).

“This allows clouds to form in the wake of a plane’s flight path. The clouds then are blown through the air with the upper level winds just like any other cloud. This is why they appear to move on satellite video loops after they form,” Johnson told AFP. 

Contrails stay in the air for varying amounts of time depending on the temperature and the amount of moisture in the air at the aircraft altitude.

Johnson and other experts said the satellite imagery in the post shows contrail clouds, not any abnormalities (archived here).

AFP identified the satellite imagery stemming from the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) in Colorado. The images were taken on November 30 over North Central Florida, and CIRA satellite analyst Dakota Smith gave AFP the original footage — available to consult here — in a December 9 email. 

CIRA spokesman Matt Rogers said on December 10 the animation showed “intermittent aircraft contrails from aircraft being flown over the Florida peninsula and over the Gulf of Mexico being blown out to sea by prevailing westerly winds aloft.”

Christopher Boxe, an associate professor of atmospheric modeling at Howard University (archived here), told AFP the phenomenon seen in the satellite loop “is well-documented and consistent with natural atmospheric processes.”

Legislation flames conspiracy

The accounts sharing the satellite images appear to support recent pushes in Florida and other US states to ban “geoengineering” programs such as cloud seeding (archived here). 

This echoes conspiratorial discourse about government weather control promoted by some Republican figures throughout 2024, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Tennessee became the first state to prohibit technologies that can “modify the atmosphere” in 2024 (archived here). Many of the lawmakers who spoke in support of the measure appeared to have been influenced by the existing conspiracies.

While methods such as cloud seeding do exist (archived here), they can only marginally enhance rain and snow in small areas, experts say.

Cloud seeding has been documented and studied for decades (archived here and here). The first experiment was conducted in 1946 (archived here), it involves silver iodide — a compound that, in large amounts, can constitute an environmental hazard, according to the National Institutes of Health (archived here).

Di Yang, an assistant professor in the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center at the University of Wyoming (archived here), previously told AFP: “Extensive research has shown no definitive large-scale or long-term impacts from cloud seeding.”

AFP has extensively reported on unfounded conspiracy theories about government-scale weather control in 2024.