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Climate change set to bumpify transatlantic flights, say researchers
The Register ^ | Flights across the pond won't be pleasant mid-century | Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted on 04/08/2013 5:44:11 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

Rising sea levels, droughts, torrential downpours, "superstorms" – climate change has been blamed for a flood [Ahem...—Ed.] of calamities, but new research shows that an even worse global warming–induced fate might soon befall us all: an inflight glass of wine spilling onto our lap when our airliner encounters increased turbulence.

"Our results suggest that climate change will lead to bumpier transatlantic flights by the middle of this century," write Paul Williams and Manoj Joshi in a paper entitled "Intensification of winter transatlantic aviation turbulence in response to climate change", published in the most recent edition of Nature Climate Change.

While we may jest about our favorite white linen trousers being ruined by a fine Cabernet, clear-air turbulence is no laughing matter for aircraft caught in serious atmospheric rough spots. As Williams and Joshi point out, airliners "encounter moderate-or-greater turbulence tens of thousands of times each year worldwide," and such turbulence has both injured passengers and damaged aircraft.

Clear-air turbulence is difficult to avoid, they remind us, because it can neither be seen by pilots nor detected by either satellites or onboard radar, unlike the convective updrafts and downdrafts that can be assumed to occur in and around clouds and thunderstorms.

Not that there hasn't been progress in predicting clear-air turbulence. Williams and Joshi cite, among others, one methodology developed by Gary Ellrod and David Knapp – often simply referred to as the Ellrod Index – that has enabled the UK Met Office and US NOAA to develop forecasts that the authors say have "shown significant skill when verified objectively against in situ observations from a fleet of British Airways aircraft."

The researchers therefore used one variant of the Ellrod Index, coupled with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) CM2.1 climate model and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A1B medium-level emissions scenario to model how climate change might affect clear-air turbulence in one of the world's busiest air corridors: the airspace within 30° to 75° N and 10° to 60° W, between North America and Europe, through which about 300 eastbound and 300 westbound flights travel per day.

Flight path from San Francisco to Heathrow airports

If Williams and Joshi are correct, our flights from San Francisco to London are about to get rather hairier

That modeling, based on 20 years of daily-mean data in December, January and February, and using both pre-industrial CO2 and doubled-CO2 levels, showed a significant increase in clear-air turbulence in the 50° to 80° N and 90° W to 20° E region – right where many if not most of those flights travel.

Not content with relying solely on the Ellrod Index, Williams and Joshi then ran the same simulations on 20 more clear-air turbulence diagnostics, "each believed or demonstrated to have predictive skill," and compared the results – which, if you plan to fly across the Atlantic in the middle of this century, weren't pretty.

Correspondence levels of 21 different clear-air turbulence models

The redder the map, the more the 21 diagnostics agree about doubled-CO2 turbulence increase

"At typical cruise altitudes in the northern half of the North Atlantic flight corridor in winter," Williams and Joshi write, "most diagnostics show a 10–40 per cent increase in the median strength of turbulence and a 40–170 per cent increase in the frequency of occurrence of moderate-or-greater turbulence."

In summary, to paraphrase Bette Davis in All About Eve, fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy flight.

Being proper climatoboffins, the authors of course provide a healthy helping of caveats when discussing their findings. Most obviously, as they put it, "GFDL-CM2.1 is only one climate model and A1B is only one future emissions scenario." Some models may conclude that there's nothing to worry about; others may produce more disturbing results.

In addition – and exhibiting the caution to which single-study conclusions should always be subjected – they also note that further research is needed "to quantify the impacts of climate change on passenger-relevant measures of aviation turbulence from all sources, together with their model and scenario dependencies."

That said, after noting that aircraft emissions and contrails have been demonstrated to have a minor additive effect on the radiative forcing that contributes to global warming, especially during the winter months that they studied, Williams and Joshi call the airlines on the karma carpet. "Aviation is partly responsible for changing the climate," they write, "but our findings show for the first time how climate change could affect aviation." ®

Bootnote

In other news from the same issue of Nature Climate Change, French and Spanish scientists have suggested that the puzzling slowdown in surface global warming since 2000 may be due to the ocean soaking up most of the extra heat energy, and that the effect may be only temporary. "If it is only related to natural variability then the rate of warming will increase soon," once researcher told Reuters. We'll see.


TOPICS: Conspiracy; Science; Weather
KEYWORDS: climatechange; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax
The Alarmists propaganda continues....

Just remember the Global Governanace wants REVENUE!

1 posted on 04/08/2013 5:44:11 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: SunkenCiv; Marine_Uncle; Fred Nerks; Carry_Okie; blam; Lorianne; Twotone; bigbob; NormsRevenge; ...

More modeling.....it is alarming.


2 posted on 04/08/2013 5:45:24 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ((The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?))
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
"Our results suggest that climate change will lead to bumpier transatlantic flights by the middle of this century,"

So we're still going to be flying Rolls-Royce and Pratt-Whitney turbine engines across the Atlantic in 2050?

If guess if there's no space program to force technology revolutions, then we're going to be flying in the same airplane technology 35 years from now.

-PJ

3 posted on 04/08/2013 5:48:27 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: Political Junkie Too

What a bunch of a****


4 posted on 04/08/2013 5:51:02 PM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

The mass of the earths atmosphere is 5 quadrillion metric tons. Of that amount only 0.04% or zero point zero is CO2. What kind of moron would have the audacity to think that man can even BEGIN to make even the most miniscule of a dent in that? It’s pure insanity, it really is. This is like claiming fat people are putting the moon out of orbit with their larger body mass. And to think Al Gore is now worth $300 million from this BS.

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/democrats/al-gore-net-worth/


5 posted on 04/08/2013 5:56:11 PM PDT by GrandJediMasterYoda (Someday our schools will teach the difference between "lose" and "loose")
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

geez its amazing how many people still state ‘global warming’ as a fact and cite actual consequences of it when it has been PROVEN to be a fraud


6 posted on 04/08/2013 5:58:03 PM PDT by Mr. K (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and democrat talking points.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

It was not too long ago that computer model predictions were used as proof of something... now, as a computer scientist myself, I can say with 100% certainty that computer models can be programmed to say exactly what you want them to say


7 posted on 04/08/2013 5:59:33 PM PDT by Mr. K (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and democrat talking points.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

How the hell are we going to fly trans Atlantic flights with solar or wind power?


8 posted on 04/08/2013 6:02:30 PM PDT by C. Edmund Wright (Tokyo Rove is more than a name, it's a GREAT WEBSITE)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

And people still wonder why Western Governments are flat broke ?


9 posted on 04/08/2013 6:13:08 PM PDT by justa-hairyape
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

If it ain’t bumpy there’s no fun.


10 posted on 04/08/2013 6:13:17 PM PDT by SkyDancer (Live your life in such a way that the Westboro church will want to picket your funeral.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

“Scientists Skew Data to Support Hyphothesis”

A one size fits all headline for these morons.


11 posted on 04/08/2013 6:14:22 PM PDT by SampleMan (Feral Humans are the refuse of socialism.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
I can almost hear the warmists conspiring around the table:

"We're caught. We fudged the figures as far as we could to prove our case. Now the numbers have leveled off and we can't explain it. What are we gonna do now?"

Our mistake was to use numbers at all. What we need is a new proof for our cause - one that can't be easily measured, therefore can't be disproved."

"That's not so easy. Temperature can be measured. Precipitation too."

"What about local phenomena? Lightning, wind gusts, hurricanes and tornadoes?"

"All logged and quantified. We can temporarily inflate the figures, but we'll end up in the same spot we're in now."

"What about the upper atmosphere? No one's looking over our shoulder up there, no backyard scientists checking up on us. We can say it's unstable up there, and who can refute us?"

"I get it. It's not hotter or colder, not wetter or dryer. because that can be checked. It's not cloudier, brighter or darker. It's just ... more turbulent."

"Who can say otherwise?"

12 posted on 04/08/2013 6:43:58 PM PDT by ZOOKER
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To: ZOOKER
LOL!

I can believe it happen just that way!

13 posted on 04/08/2013 7:11:14 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ((The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?))
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To: stylecouncilor

...mid-Pacific midnight bumps...uh, I mean, bump....


14 posted on 04/08/2013 7:12:59 PM PDT by onedoug
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

But the BIG STORY on Action News...super trees grow in Canada fed by copious amounts of CO2 and sunlight....live report at 11...


15 posted on 04/08/2013 7:30:39 PM PDT by Shady (Libya shows us how Americans rate...)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

NOT ANOTHER FU*KING MODEL!!!


16 posted on 04/08/2013 7:33:34 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Pure unadulterated bull shit!!!!


17 posted on 04/08/2013 7:38:14 PM PDT by dalereed
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; 11B40; A Balrog of Morgoth; A message; ACelt; Aeronaut; AFPhys; AlexW; ...
LULZ!

Global Warming PING!

Play me

You have been pinged because of your interest in environmentalism, alarmist wackos, mainstream media doomsday hype, and other issues pertaining to global warming.

Freep-mail me to get on or off: Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on global warming.

Guns Responsible for Global Warming (LULZ)

Sarah Palin on Green Crony Capitalism (my title)

Will the next mandate be smart cars and candles?

Lowry: Meet the new climate deniers

Obama-backed green automaker lays off most staff in 'strategic' step

Global Warming on Free Republic

Latest from Global Warming News

Latest from Real Climate

Latest from Climate Depot

Latest from Greenie Watch

Latest from Junk Science

Latest from Terra Daily

18 posted on 04/08/2013 9:21:14 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Drag Me From Hell!)
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To: dalereed

Peop;e dpn’t believe the polar bear stories anymore....they have to try some new....see post #12.


19 posted on 04/08/2013 9:25:21 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ((The Global Warming Hoax was a Criminal Act....where is Al Gore?))
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
RE: "More modeling.....it is alarming."
The forces at work are not going to just go away because they have been exposed as false prophets and criminals.
20 posted on 04/08/2013 10:31:12 PM PDT by Marine_Uncle (Galt level is not far away......)
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