• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta June 29, 2022
London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty June 29, 2022
G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance June 29, 2022
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate News Network

Climate change brings ill winds for airline industry

July 13, 2015
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

The vapour trail from a passenger jet flying at high altitude.

The vapour trail from a passenger jet flying at high altitude.

 

Scientists say wind patterns altered by climate variability are costing airlines millions of dollars in extra fuel and flying time − and increasing CO2 emissions. LONDON, 14 July, 2015 − Global warming may already be taking its toll of air miles. As jet planes burn fuel and release carbon dioxide, the atmosphere warms and causes head winds to build up. Tail winds do too, but round trip journey times are nevertheless creeping up − and so are fuel costs. A team of US scientists say the cumulative effect of the longer flight times that they think may have resulted from climate variation would have added millions of dollars to airlines’ costs, and perhaps a billion gallons of extra fuel. Kristopher Karnauskas, an associate scientist in geology and geophysics at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the US, and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that they analysed flight times and daily wind speeds at cruising altitudes for four airlines on three routes over the last 20 years.

Climate variation

They then used 34 different climate models to identify how the winds, and flight times, might have responded to climate variation, and how the response might continue. The flight paths chosen were between Honolulu and the three West Coast airports of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. The team found that, in general, eastbound flights were faster than westbound for all carriers, and that climate change had made a difference of about a minute per round trip, with a small extra cost in fuel on each flight. This showed that the eastbound trip might be 10 minutes shorter, the westbound trip was 11 minutes longer, and most of this difference could be accounted for by natural cycles based on changes in ocean temperatures. The cycles include El Niño, that periodic bubble of heat that appears at intervals in the Pacific, to upset climate patterns, bring drought and fire to the Indonesian rainforests, floods to California, and upset the fisheries off the coast of Peru.

“The wind fluctuates by about 40 mph, so multiply those couple of minutes by each flight per day . . . and that residual adds up quickly”

During the 20 years studied, the four airlines made 250,000 flights on those three routes, so the tiny differences began to add up to substantial costs in time and fuel. The oceanographers then looked ahead to the wind speed predictions of the climate models, and found that this could add an additional 5.5 hours per round trip, per carrier, per comparable route. This in turn would extrapolate to an additional 480,000 US gallons of jet fuel consumed, and an additional 4.6 million kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted, each year. This is small in terms of the overall emissions figures for the airline industry, but the researchers’ sample was of just a tiny proportion of all global flights. In 2014, commercial airlines made 102,470 flights a day on 49,871 routes. If each plane spent just one extra minute on each round trip flight, that would mean that commercial jets would spend 300,000 hours longer in the air, burn an additional billion gallons of jet fuel, and emit an extra 10,000 million kilograms of CO2 per year.

Increasing airtime

Global warming already costs the airlines increasing airtime and wear and tear because atmospheric turbulence seems to be on the increase. However, the oceanographers’ study began not because of a bumpy ride, but because of an unexpectedly smooth one. One co-author of the report, Hannah Barkley, a graduate student at WHOI, had noticed that a direct flight back from Honolulu to the east coast of the US took far less time than expected, and asked Dr Karnauskas why he thought that might be. In fact, the jet stream that day was exceptionally fast – and the research started from that point. The scientists found, by looking at 20 years of data, that for every 10mph speedup of the prevailing wind, there was a difference of perhaps a couple of minutes in flight time. They called the there-and-back difference “the residual”. “The wind really fluctuates by about 40 mph, so multiply those couple of minutes by each flight per day, by each carrier, by each route, and that residual adds up quickly,” Dr Karnauskas says. “We’re talking millions of dollars in changes in fuel costs.” − Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

stux / Pixabay
Air & Marine

Big Seven European Airlines Lag on Reducing Sky-High Emissions: Report

June 13, 2022
76
Ars Electronica/flickr
Solar

Unique ‘Smartflower’ Microgrid to Power Saskatchewan High School

June 13, 2022
154
http://midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/24/as-pipeline-concerns-mount-a-renewed-focus-on-the-great-lakes-enbridge-mackinac-line-5/
Pipelines / Rail Transport

Line 5 Closure Brings Negligible Rise in Gas Prices, Enbridge Consultant Finds

June 10, 2022
206

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

François GOGLINS/wikimedia commons

Corrosion Problem Shutters Half of France’s Nuclear Reactors

June 29, 2022
227
Keith Hirsche

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
411
Danielle Scott/flickr

Advocate Urges Ottawa to Intervene Before Ontario Builds Highway 413

June 29, 2022
130
David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1.2k
Number 10/flickr

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
146
London Eye UK England

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
131

Recent Posts

AJEL / Pixabay

Windfall Tax on Food, Fossil, Pharma Giants Would Raise $490B to Solve ‘Catastrophic’ Food Crisis: Oxfam

June 29, 2022
58
futureatlas.com/flickr

Ottawa Demands Deeper Fuel Emissions Cuts, Offers Fossils a Double-Dip on Tax Breaks

June 29, 2022
78
Province of B.C./flickr

Comox Joins Municipalities Seeking Ban on New Gas Stations

June 29, 2022
78
/Piqsels

Refocus Agriculture Spending to Cut Emissions, Boost Productivity, OECD Urges Governments

June 29, 2022
29
Jimmy Emerson, DVM/flickr

Public Vigilance Key to Protecting Greenbelts for Climate Resilience, Report Finds

June 29, 2022
36
Miguel V/Wikimedia Commons

Forests Fall Short of Full Carbon Storage Potential, Study Finds

June 29, 2022
64
Next Post
The sacred mosque at Mecca in Saudi Arabia

Muslim scholars say climate change poses dire threat

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}