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RISING TEMPERATURES DUE to global warming will make it harder for aircraft to take off in coming decades, a US study has warned.
The news comes a few weeks after heat-related plane groundings in Arizona.
Scientists warned on Thursday that if planet-warming emissions continue unabated, aircraft fuel capacities and payload weights will have to be reduced by up to 4% on the hottest days for some aircraft.
During the hottest parts of the day, 10 to 30% of fully loaded planes may have to remove some fuel, cargo or passengers, or wait for cooler hours to fly, the study, which was published in the journal Climatic Change, said.
“Weight restriction may impose a non-trivial cost on airline and impact aviation operations around the world,” Ethan Coffel, lead author and a Columbia University PhD student, said.
“The sooner climate can be incorporated into mid- and long-range plans, the more effective adaptation efforts can be.”
A 4% weight reduction could mean 12 or 13 fewer passengers on an average 160-seat aircraft operating today.
Heatwaves
As air warms, it thins and wings generate less lift. Depending on factors such as type of aircraft and runway length, a packed plane may be unable to take off safely if temperatures rise too high.
The problem will be particularly prevalent during heatwaves. The study projected annual maximum daily temperatures at airports worldwide to rise four to eight degrees Celsius by 2080.
Co-author and Columbia climatologist Radley Horton said some effects could be mitigated with new engine or body designs, or expanded runways.
Other researchers have already warned that climate change may increase dangerous turbulence and headwinds that could lengthen travel times. Rising sea levels are already threatening to swamp some major airports, the new study said.
Extreme temperatures prompted American Airlines to ground 43 flights to and from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on 20 June, when temperatures were set to reach a record 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius).
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Madrid is 2000′ elevation and reaches 40C during the summer. Most modern aircraft have no difficulty getting airborne there so I think this is a non issue.
@Timmy: it’s only an issue in places where the runway is short.
@Timmy: opinions based on personal beliefs and experiences versus objective scientific studies.
Not an issue until the ignorant give both as much importance.
@Timmy: thank God you have thoroughly debunked scientific findings through a single piece of anecdotal evidence!
@Seth Cheffetz: Thanks Seth, I really try my best sometimes
@Timmy: Dubai during the Summer can reach near 50 degrees Celsius durind their hottest Summer months and the airport handles the worlds largest commercial airliners.
@Timmy: There was a record 47C recorded in Spain this week
@Permo Dermo: not a good comparison, Phoenix airports longest runway is 3,500m at 1,135ft ASL, Dubai’ longest runway is 4,450m at 68ft ASL, big difference for performance on aircraft.
@Timmy: Something tells me I won’t be around in 2080 since I’m 36 now lol
@Scorpionvenomm: Imagine that age in degrees, you’d be struggling to get airborne in 2080
Bullshit 50C is certainly a problem which will increase take off distance
And limit some aircraft even with additives
@Timmy: Madrid airport runway is 4.5 kilometers long, one of the largest in the world, because of its high elevation. To give you scale to that: its 80% longer than the longest runway at Dublin. If Madrid experienced the temperatures of 45c that Dubai had this week large aircraft would not be able to take off. The whole point of the article is that higher temps mean longer take off runs, larger fuel burns and therefore larger greenhouse gas emissions. .
I don’t understand the purpose of this article. They cite Arizona issues but that was due to dated airplanes not having capabilities. What about Dubai?? Or Ethiopia? Both have significantly higher temps. Ppl turn off when they read over excited ill informed pieces. Funny they didn’t mention the temp limit that planes should be build against
@MikejG:If you look at Addis Ababa the airport is at an elevation of over 7000 ft, So you have to factor in the heat and altitude RWY length etc for take off.
That’s why they stop here for refueling purposes on their US sectors.
@MikejG: the author of this article cites the Arizona issues, not the researchers behind the study. Don’t base your opinion on how a journalist presents research.
I think most people will admit at this stage that global warming is a real thing – it’s been peer reviewed by thousands of climate scientists. Most people in Ireland would laugh at the likes of Donald trump for denying it.
But those Michael O’Leary fan boys who come on here constantly to defend him no matter what he says would also defend him for denying climate change is a thing. Facts are that planes are one of the worst causes of global warming because the emissions that they put out are being put out so high up in the atmosphere multiplying their effect.
I’m as guilty as anyone of flying by the way but I’m sick to the teeth of people defending that gobs**te even when he’s irresponsibly denying climate change is a thing!
@Seán C: not denying climate change just arguing that it’s a natural process.
@Jay Orange:
Except if you took the time to actually read the scientific papers themselves and look at the hard data you’d see that what we’re currently experiencing is totally unlike any past natural climate cycles.
@Jay Orange: It would take millions of years to increase co2 to the levels that humans have done in just 200 years. Nothing natural about man made climate change- “After millions of years of relative stability, just a few hundred years of greenhouse gas emissions will charge the Earth and its creatures toward unprecedented warming” – highest in 200 million years http://www.iflscience.com/environment/co2-levels-surging-toward-highest-in-more-than-200-million-years/
Moot. All the runways will be flooded.
Congratulations again on pushing the global warming agenda.
It makes me sick how a phenomenon so natural as the temperatures rising in summer is now tagged “global warming”.
All this article is doing is threatening that if we don’t support action against this imaginary problem, air travel will be made more expensive. And action usually (always) involves more taxes to be paid by the poor guy/gal in their kitchen boiling some water to make a cup of tea. And more & new taxes cannot come soon enough because governments are BROKE and they are running out of things to tax!
I don’t read stories about how warm countries are struggling getting aircrafts airborne.
This is more nonsense thrown in the face of the unsuspecting reader, mass brainwashing in action.
Woe to us if we do not believe what they are desperately trying to shove down our throats!!!
This issue has become like a cult, a new religion, beyond questioning. Welcome to the church of global warming where humans are the devil and governments are the angels
Woe to me the ignorant non-believer daring to voice my opinion, believing in something beyond ourselves humans, like the sun’s energy cycles, affecting the warming and cooling of this giant blue floating ball.
I guess I’ll take the boat for my next trip…
@Marc Ireland:
If you think Milankovych cycles are causing the current climate changes you don’t understand the science.
And if you think temperatures getting warmer in the summer is being pushed as global warming you’re pretty blinkered.
@Marc Ireland:
Warmer temperatures = more stringent take off parameters in terms of weight, runway length etc. Recent heatwave in western US constrained aircraft take off’s at several airports. Nothing sinister or conspiratorial about it. It’s just the way it is. The world is getting warmer. Human activity is a major factor in this process. In addition, Elvis died in 1977, The Apollo 11 mission did result in 2 men landing on the moon in 1969, vaccination has saved tens of millions of lives over the past 100 years and fluoride in the water has not turned the population into zombie slaves for the edification of putative reptilian overlords. Life goes on. It’s weird but not your weird….
@Marc Ireland: Apologies, but I prefer to follow basic science, rather than your opinion. The CO2 impact on climate has been understood for a lot longer than Jet travel.
Average global temperature is increasing, there will be further rises in sea levels. Our choice is by how much.
All planets in the solar system contain a climate and even the thin atmosphere of Mercury which gets blown away periodically by solar winds. The failure so far is to recognize how climate for our planet was forcebly shoved into the conditions of a common greenhouse and then parceled up into social politics, not so much parish pump politics as petrol pump politics.
For people who can actually reason and don’t need to be treated like children, the ‘climate change’ bandwagon is merely a symptom of an overreaching agenda which began with Newton and his attempt to scale up experimental sciences to planetary and astronomical levels -
“Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.”
@Gerald Kelleher: That’s like saying Einsteins E=(mc2)2 + (pc)2 is wrong because I say so. I don’t care if the likes of John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton experimentally proved it and won the Nobel prize for doing so, (and many more have done so since) I’m saying it’s wrong without a single shred of evidence to back it up. Do you see how crazy that is.
@Gary: You kids are easily led and you picked a poor example to demonstrate your point.I don’t know what age you are but I firmly believe adults can think and write reasonably once they are made familiar with the root causes of the ‘climate change’ bandwagon and why it is a symptom of an overreaching systemic agenda rather than an argument in itself.
The empirical agenda where speculative predictions can be passed off as inviolate facts, at least as it was applied to astronomy and particularly the Earth’s motions, is founded on Newton’s absolute/relative ‘definitions’ so that is where readers can be made aware where the voodoo merchants 100 years ago got relativity. Of course the whole scheme relies on convincing the wider population that mathematicians have an insight denied the wider population but that is all bluffing.
The Journal normally prevents me from replying extensively on these matters but it is their website so I respect that.
Thank you for your condescending contribution to the debate about the future condition of our atmosphere. One thing Newton understood is that if you treat people as ignorant children then they will not believe a word you say. You Sir, have yet to learn about the human thought process of people outside of the pseudo intellectual realm you appear to inhabit and it’s relationship with the concept of credibility. To paraphrase, up yer nuts you dipstick
@Gerald Kelleher: Early 40′s and Physics is my living. The top climatologists on the planet disagree with you and they have proof to back up their claims. I know who I believe. Your constant Newton bashing (voted the number one most influential physicist of all time) makes you and your arguments pointless. But you’ve gotta get your kicks from somewhere I’d suppose.
@Gary: Newton is bluffing but in a specific way so until the historical details are tackled which brought astronomy into the realms of predictive experimentation and its conclusions, people in our era will be stuck with a symptom of that systemic failure .
Denying climate change is like denying that we’ve covered a large percentage of the earth with tarmac and concrete. Just because harmful gases are invisible, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t pumping them out.
Not many are denying climate change. That has happened since the dawn of time. It’s the man made bit coupled with the scam of carbon taxes that many have the problem with.
By a large percentage do you mean a fraction of a fraction of one per cent?
@Flip off: The actual percentage is around 3℅ according to GRUMP – Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project. If you think that’s not significant, then no wonder people are ignoring the science of man made global warming. If 3% of your brain was removed, you might feel differently about it, but then again, maybe it has been.
Rising temperatures? I had the bloody fire on last night.
If a plane can’t take off because it’s 49 C, somehow I think not flying would be the lesser problem.
Ok, Dubai, one of the busiest airports in the world and temp often hits 50°C, no problems.
Reads like an article touching on the impending end of the age of cheaper flying…we need aircraft to move passengers, aircraft emissions are a leading cause of global warming, the only solution is an increase in cost.
Lets be clear it would take millions of years of natural climate change to increase c02 levels to what they are today what humans have achieved in just 200 years of fossil fuel burning. We are hurling towards warming climate in half a billion years all achieved in just over 200 years and a few more years if fossil fuels are not reduced https://cleantechnica.com/2017/07/11/new-study-suggests-headed-warmest-climate-half-billion-years/
We are doomed
Next up, Ryanair announces surcharge per degree of warmer weather
I hope this means Christy adds another verse to the Knock song.
Or just get Fat Bodies to lose weight!
Ehhh you forgot to mention Phoenix Arizona is in a desert. Usually warm in those.
Fake news! Goodbye
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