Small cuts in air traffic would level off global heating caused by flying – study

A modest diet in our flying habits would be enough to level off the global heating caused by the aviation industry. That’s the surprising conclusion from a study, which also warns that if the aviation industry continues to grow at current rates then it will be responsible for around nearly 0.1C of heating by 2050. Taking a flight adds to global heating in two ways. The first is from the direct effect of burning jet fuel and producing carbon dioxide, which remains in the atmosphere. The second is from indirect effects caused by tailpipe emissions in the upper atmosphere, resulting in cirrus clouds that trap additional heat and complex chemical reactions that alter the balance of greenhouse gases such as ozone and methane. Working out how much global heating aircraft cause is complicated because carbon dioxide hangs around for thousands of years (meaning a flight taken in 1950 is still contributing to global heating today), while the indirect effects (clouds, contrails and the like) are much shorter lived – usually less than a year. Milan Kloewer, from the University of Oxford, and colleagues from Manchester Metropoliton University took both the direct and indirect heating effects of aircraft into account to model the aviation industry’s contribution to global heating up to the year 2050. They found that to date aircraft are responsible for 0.04C of global heating: about 4% of the 1.2C temperature increase humans have caused since the Industrial Revolution. If aviation continues to grow at about 3% a year then it will have caused 0.09C of heating by 2050. Story has details.<br/>