In case you needed any more convincing that climate change is bad for both the planet and humans a new paper has come out claiming that planes are going to find it harder to take-off in future.
The study, which appeared in the journal Climate Change, was compiled by researchers from Columbia University, NASA and the Logistics Management Institute and found that as global temperatures increase planes will struggle to get off the ground.
The simple problem here is the density of the air. As air gets warmer it becomes less dense making it harder for a plane to generate enough lift to take off.
In order to take off in these conditions a plane then has to go faster so it can generate enough lift.
You can probably see where we’re going with this which is that it is in fact one giant self-fulfilling prophecy. As planes have to go faster to take off they’ll start burning more fuel and in turn be generating even more greenhouse gasses.
The end result of which? Well the planet gets even warmer.
There are repercussions for us too which is that airports will eventually have to start investing in lengthening their runways.
Airlines will find themselves having to increase ticket prices because it’s costing them more fuel to get a plane into the air and finally flights in general will become more disrupted because of the increasingly difficult weather conditions.
Sadly the bad news doesn’t stop there either, the University of Reading revealed in April that as climate change gets worse flight are going to be at a much higher risk of experiencing extreme turbulence.
The researchers found that light turbulence in the atmosphere would increase by 59%, light-to-moderate turbulence would increase by 75%, moderate by 94%, moderate-to-severe by 127%.
Finally, and perhaps most worryingly, severe turbulence would increase by a massive 149%.
While it’s true that airline manufacturers are developing planes that are more efficient this is a problem that can only really be solved if climate change as a whole is tackled quite seriously.