By Jim Bloch
Planning to fly from Detroit to New York City for the ball drop at Times Square on New Year’s Eve or to Las Vegas for the choreographed fireworks display by the casinos on the Strip?
The jet you’ll be on will contribute to climate change and climate change, in turn, could cause you any number of travel snags.
That’s the conclusion of a new study by Climate Central, the nonprofit organization that studies climate change and sustainable energy and provides information to the public and decision-makers at all levels of government.
“Air travel not only contributes to heat-trapping pollution — the resulting warming now poses new and growing challenges for air travel,” said the study.
The burning of fossil fuels by humans, which began in earnest with the Industrial Revolution, generates carbon dioxide and other gases that trap the heat of the sun, warming Earth.
A total 917,029,842 people boarded 15,416,640 flights in the United States in 2022, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s “Air Traffic By the Numbers.”
That’s more than 42,000 flights per day.
“Aviation emissions rose in 2022 to reach nearly 80 percent of their pre-pandemic peak in 2019,” said the International Energy Agency in its annual report on aviation. “After increasing an average of 2.4 percent per year from 1990-2019, direct carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion plummeted from more than 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019 to less than 600 Mt CO2 in 2020.”
Air travel accounted for about two percent of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022; CO2 emissions related to aviation have quadrupled 1966-2018, growing faster than truck, rail or ship emissions.
“As climate change worsens coastal flooding and extreme weather events, more flights could be grounded from weather-related delays,” the Climate Central report said. “A warming atmosphere can also increase in-flight turbulence.”
Weather accounted for about 75 percent of all flight delays in 2022. Detroit Metropolitan Airport ranked 27th in delays in 2017-2019 with an average of 1,539 per year.
Five ways climate change affects aviation
The five ways a warmer world impacts air travel are: 1) Coastal airports are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges; 2) Hotter air is less dense than colder air, so take-offs are harder in the heat; 3) the frequency of lightning strikes, already at one or two per commercial jet per year, is increasing; 4) climate related changes to the jet stream may lengthen flights, especially west-bound flights; and 5) increased wind shears in the jet stream is causing more turbulence.
“A certain type of turbulence known as clear-air turbulence can’t be seen by pilots or detected by radar,” according to Climate Central. “A recent study found a 41percent increase in severe clear-air turbulence over the U.S. between 1979 and 2020 — and it is projected to increase further due to climate change.”
Earth’s oceans absorb 90 percent of the heat caused by burning fossil fuels. Warmer water is bigger water, meaning sea level rises. Melting glaciers exacerbate the problem. The oceans rose 7.8 inches 1901-2018, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They’re expected to rise another 10-12 inches in the next 30 years, affecting airports such as LaGuardia in New York, Washington National, Louis Armstrong New Orleans, and the airports in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Philadelphia, Tampa, San Francisco, Oakland and Honolulu.
“Reducing heat-trapping pollution from air travel now is critical to limit future warming,” the report concluded. “Adaptation measures, including seawalls or other coastal defenses, can help protect existing airports from rising seas and storm surges, but they can be costly and complicated. In especially hot locations or during summer, airports may choose to schedule flights during cooler parts of the day to mitigate heat effects. Where possible, airports may expand runways to accommodate longer takeoff distances.”
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
