Google – AFP, 8 April 2013
 |
A plane
prepares to land at Frankfurt airport, western Germany, on
November 22, 2011
(DPA/AFP/File, Frank Rumpenhorst)
|
PARIS —
Flights will become bumpier as global warming destabilises air currents at
altitudes used by commercial airliners, climate scientists warned Monday.
Already,
atmospheric turbulence injures hundreds of airline passengers each year,
sometimes fatally, damaging aircraft and costing the industry an estimated $150
million (115 million euros), scientists said.
"Climate
change is not just warming the Earth's surface, it is also changing the
atmospheric winds ten kilometres (six miles) high, where planes fly," said
study co-author Paul Williams of the University of Reading's National Centre
for Atmospheric Science in southeastern England.
"That
is making the atmosphere more vulnerable to the instability that creates
clear-air turbulence," he told AFP by email.
"Our
research suggests that we'll be seeing the 'fasten seatbelts' sign turned on
more often in the decades ahead."
Turbulence
is mainly caused by vertical airflow -- up-draughts and down-draughts near
clouds and thunderstorms.
Clear-air
turbulence, which is not visible to the naked eye and cannot be picked up by
satellite or traditional radar, is linked to atmospheric jet streams, which are
projected to strengthen with climate change.
The study
authors used supercomputer simulations of the North Atlantic jet stream, a
strong upper-atmospheric wind driven by temperature differences between
colliding Arctic and tropical air.
The jet
stream affects traffic in the aviation corridor between Europe and North
America -- one of the world's busiest with about 300 eastbound and 300
westbound flights per day.
They found
that a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere from pre-industrial
levels, predicted within 40 years, would cause turbulence to be 10-40 percent
more forceful at typical cruise altitudes.
"Turbulence
strong enough to make walking difficult and to dislodge unsecured objects is
likely to become twice as common in transatlantic airspace by the middle of
this century," said Williams.
"As
well as making flights bumpier and less comfortable, this could also increase
the risk of injury to passengers and crew" -- especially in winter when
Northern Hemisphere clear-air turbulence is thought to be most intense.
Williams
said CO2 causes non-uniform warming, which increases the jet stream winds.
"A
stronger jet stream means the atmosphere is less stable, which creates more
turbulence," he explained.
The study,
published in the journal Nature Climate Change, said planes already spent about
one percent of their cruise time in strong clear-air turbulence.
Frequent
flyers have reported bumpiness to be on the rise, but this is the first study
to actually measure the projected impact of climate change, said the authors.
"Flight
paths may need to become more convoluted to avoid patches of turbulence that
are stronger and more frequent, in which journey times will lengthen and fuel
consumption and emissions will increase," they wrote.
"Aviation
is partly responsible for changing the climate in the first place," added
Williams.
"It is
ironic that the climate looks set to exact its revenge by creating a more
turbulent atmosphere for flying."
Related Articles:
"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)
"...The Weather... Again
My partner has been "against the grain" in the past years, giving you what I have channelled about the weather. Is it global warming? No. Is it going to get better? No. This is a two-generation cycle. There will continue to be earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and storms. This is a recalibration of life in the ocean, and humanity must go through this in any way they can. This is a cycle, a known and expected one, but since you haven't gone through it in modern times, it's not well understood yet. ..."
“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.
Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.
Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“
THE RELATIONSHIP TO GAIA - April 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)
New Mini Ice Age
"The weather you have today, and all the alarming attributes of it, is a scenario of what was scheduled to happen on Earth anyway. I review again that the weather changes you are seeing prophesied by myself, 21 years ago, are not a surprise. The changes are not caused by the pollutants you put in the air. You call it global warming and that's a nice phrase, and perhaps that will get you to put less pollutants in the air – a very good thing. But what you are seeing in the weather shift today was not caused by Humans putting things into the air. It would have happened anyway in about 300 years."
"We've called this process the water cycle, since it's all about water, not about air. The water is the predominant attribute of Gaia and of the weather cycle you're seeing. More predominant is the temperature of it. The cycle is ice to water and water to ice, and has been repeated on this planet over and over and over. It is not new. It is not exceptional. It is not frightening. But it's a cycle that modern humanity has not seen before, and it's a long cycle that is beyond the life span of a Human Being. Therefore, it tends to be overlooked or not seen at all !"
"In the days of the Lemurians, the water level of the Pacific Ocean was almost 400 feet lower, and that's only 50,000 years ago. [Kryon invites science to check this out – the water level at that time.] That was a water cycle working, and the reason it was lower was due to so much of the water being stored as ice. Today you're going through another water cycle that will eventually lead to cooling. The last one was in the 1400s."
"Science sees that at about 1650. As mentioned, they are so slow there is no remembrance that a Human has of them except in past writings and in the rings of the trees. The time span of the changes is so great that environmental record keeping does not exist in the form that it does today. But you can still look at the rings of the trees and at the striations of the rocks and can generally figure out that a few hundred years ago, you had a mini-ice age. Now you're going to have another one."
Fuel cell
engines work by replacing gas with hydrogen. The hydrogen is combined with
oxygen within the engine, creating a chemical reaction. This chemical energy is
then converted into electrical energy, which in turn powers the motor in the
engine. When fuel cell technology is compared to the current ‘plug in’ electric
engines, the results show us that fuel cell engines are a way of sustaining our
current driving habits, without causing any harm to our environment.
