Climate Change Will Boost Plane Turbulence, Suggests Study

sciencehabit writes "Get used to a bumpy ride. The strength and frequency of atmospheric turbulence affecting transatlantic flights will increase by midcentury, a new study suggests. During winter months, 16 of the 21 often-used ways in which scientists measure turbulence suggest that the average intensity of the plane-rattling phenomenon will be between 10% and 40% stronger when CO2 concentrations are double their preindustrial value. Accordingly, the frequency of moderate-or-greater turbulence—intensities at which passengers will experience accelerations of 0.5 g or more, which are strong enough to toss items about the cabin—will rise by between 40% and 170%. As a result of pilots needing to dodge strong turbulence, flight paths will become longer, and fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions will increase—possibly leading to even more turbulence."

Comments

Re:or, like most of the tens of thousands of model

[i_ate_god]

citation needed

Re:Turbulence

[SJHillman]

That depends on how hot the coffee on your lap is.

Question

[Sparticus789]

How do researchers know what turbulence was like in the pre-industrial era? Unless Ancient Astronomers took the readings and handed them down to us in carved stone tablets, we are merely GUESSING what the turbulence was like.

Re:or, like most of the tens of thousands of model

[NatasRevol]

Pretty obvious when there's a sentence like this " Even this year major factors have been discovered that render all previous models void"

ALL? Really?

False Memory Syndrome?

[cirby]

I was studying ecology in the mid-1970s, and the panic then was certainly "the ice age is coming NOW!"

If you're "remembering" the predictions as being 3000-5000 AD, then you're probably recalling the "normal" ice age predictions of the time. The panic-mongers were claiming that the ice age was already starting to happen in the 1970s, and that we'd be well frozen over by 2000 or so.

Re:False Memory Syndrome?

[GameboyRMH]

You were studying ecology and didn't know those predictions were nonsense made by a crackpot? The "Ice Age scare" was about as popular in the scientific community as the 2012 Mayan apocalypse theories.

Re:or, like most of the tens of thousands of model

[interkin3tic]

I could see two ways in which these studies are/will be wastes:

1. By now, the studies are telling us what we already know, and aren't convincing policymakers or lobbyists to change because their opposition to curbing carbon dioxide emissions wasn't ever really based on skepticism of the science.

2. When most of the developed world starts feeling the negative consequences, they'll do something to alleviate the problem. And it will be some short-sighted solution that no one really fully investigated. Like iron injection. To deal with the consequences of that will be a chain of other decisions terminating in gorillas freezing to death. The bill will be sent to people who weren't involved in the decision to ignore the early warnings about climate change anyway.

Re:or, like most of the tens of thousands of model

[khallow]

As far as I can remember

So how many kilos of bullshit is your memory worth?

As for me, I find it interesting how much of the most alarmist climate research comes out of two places, the University of East Anglia (this research) or the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in NASA (particularly, the James Hansen stuff).

Flatly speaking

[fyngyrz]

It's plain that the plain the plane is flying above serves as a base for an infinite number of planes; which plane is it that the increased turbulence is in? Can the plane not fly above or below this plane? Can't a fella go off on a tangent around here?

--Geometrically Challenged Guy

"Hydrogen Sonata" by Iain M. Banks covers this

[Anonymous Coward]

About page 280 he discusses the problem of modeling the future, given huge computer power.

There are 2 choices of models : either one models the physical reality in careful detail or one has averaging functions. Detailed models necessarily have chaos built in, in which case the results vary wildly and the modeler has to apply averaging or a selection function.

The choice of averaging or selection functions, in both approaches to modeling, determines the actual real-world usefulness of the models. There is no a priori way of knowing what averaging functions are useful.

It seems to me there is little discussion of the effects of different averaging functions in climate model, and not enough history to know which will be useful.

In any case, it is easy to build models, and very difficult to know their relationship to external reality.