A Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change concluded that the climate change over the Pacific Ocean is increasing flight times between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, causing airplanes to burn more fuel and emit more CO2. U.S. government has recently made moves to look at how climate change is being exacerbated by commercial airplanes, which for account about 3 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and about 0.5 percent globally.
“Normally, when we think about the airline industry and climate change, we think about how global aviation contributes to climate change through such means as carbon dioxide and aerosol emissions — and for good reason,” study lead author Kristopher Karnauskas said. “However, in our study, we’re flipping this around. We’re trying to probe the extent to which climate change might influence the airline industry beginning with shorter-term natural cycles that we can readily observe with existing real-world data.” Those cycles include the El Niño-Southern Oscilliation, or ENSO, and the Arctic Oscillation, which drive natural climate variability over the Pacific. Karnauskas’ team studied U.S. Department of Transportation data for 250,000 commercial flights between Honolulu and the West Coast, and compared them to observed winds at an airplane’s cruising altitude to understand how the flights are being affected by the wind patterns. They found a strong correlation between air travel times and fluctuations in the ENSO and Arctic Oscillation.
“This study is focused primarily on one part of the total picture, as you know, and so points the way to larger studies assessing something more like the whole (airline industry) route structure as currently flown and what might be flown in a changing world,” Penn State geosciences professor Richard B. Alley said. In showing that commercial flight times will increase in a warming world, the study illustrates that everyone’s lives will be touched by climate change in some way and that people will need to adapt, he said…..
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