Companies are reshaping operations to cope with climate chan

[pixy0stix]

Companies are reshaping operations to cope with a changing climate - wapo.st/3Wmea0q

[pixy0stix]

The airline part of the article had some new information for me. I knew about the increase in turbulence (and there's been a few articles this year about it), but I didn't know that planes couldn't fly if the air was super hot.

[aurora]

I'm sad that we've failed so abysmally at slowing climate change, but at this point it seems like the only way to convince people in the U.S. is for it to hit us directly. Maybe our companies losing money and us consumers being inconvenienced will help with convincing people?

[VillainV]

Jul 25, 2024 9:54:04 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

The airline part of the article had some new information for me. I knew about the increase in turbulence (and there's been a few articles this year about it), but I didn't know that planes couldn't fly if the air was super hot.

Hot air is less dense (basic chemistry) which means engines produce less thrust and wings produce less lift. Taking off when the air is less dense (either hot or high altitude or both) is a lot more dangerous because the plane may not climb as fast, and if it experiences an engine failure it may not be able to take off at all with the remaining engines (and might be going too fast to stop on the remaining runway).

It’s a complicated physics problem….but basically there’s a “minimum speed to keep going” in the event an engine is lost. And there’s a “maximum speed to stop” in the runway remaining. When it gets really hot/air less dense, those numbers can invert so there’s a window where if an engine failure or other emergency occurs, you’re too fast to stop and too slow to keep going and take off. I don’t know about commercial airlines, but in the military it took a pretty high level waiver to operate in those conditions and we only did it in combat. I imagine most airlines wouldn’t take off at all in those conditions.

[aurora]

VillainV, I'm always happy to geek out on science. A fun related fact is that the lower air density (due mostly to altitude but also some hot weather) and associated need for higher speeds is a key reason why Denver has the 5th longest runway in the world and longest in the U.S. (almost 5 km).