It’s Getting Too Hot for Airplanes

The impacts of rising temperatures on aircraft takeoff performance (2017)

Coffel, E. D., Thompson, T. R., & Horton, R. M. (2017).

Climatic Change, 144(2), 381–388. doi:10.1007/s10584-017-2018-9

http://www.regionalclimateperspectives.com/uploads/4/4/2/5/4...

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/s10584-017-2018-9

    Steadily rising mean and extreme temperatures as a result of climate change will likely impact the air transportation system over the coming decades.

    As air temperatures rise at constant pressure, air density declines, resulting in less lift generation by an aircraft wing at a given airspeed and potentially imposing a weight restriction on departing aircraft.

    This study presents a general model to project future weight restrictions across a fleet of aircraft with different takeoff weights operating at a variety of airports.

    We construct performance models for five common commercial aircraft and 19 major airports around the world and use projections of daily temperatures from the CMIP5 model suite under the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emissions scenarios to calculate required hourly weight restriction.

    We find that on average, 10–30% of annual flights departing at the time of daily maximum temperature may require some weight restriction below their maximum takeoff weights, with mean restrictions ranging from 0.5 to 4% of total aircraft payload and fuel capacity by mid- to late century.

    Both mid-sized and large aircraft are affected, and airports with short runways and high temperatures, or those at high elevations, will see the largest impacts.

Too hot for the Boeing 737. Whenever you hear about planes having trouble it is the Boeing 737, which thanks to a 1967 struggles to take off on a good day. (Takes twice the runway of some planes twice the same size!)

Which means fewer passengers per flight, and more flights, hence more carbon etc.

Just once there will be one of these effects that is not a positive feedback.