Subject: Oh No! Did global warming help bring down Air France flight 447? |
From: "Marc Morano-ClimateDepot.com" |
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 15:33:12 -0400 |
To: "'Marc Morano-ClimateDepot.com'" |
04
June, 2009, 21:35
As the
investigation continues as to what brought down the French airliner over the
Atlantic Ocean with 228 people on board, a Russian climatologist believes
global warming played a significant part.
For even the
most experienced pilots, flying over the Intertropical Convergence Zone
(ITCZ) is oftentimes a white-knuckle affair.
The ITC zone
is a constantly
fluctuating band that is located between 5º north and 5º south of the
equator. It produces some of the heaviest precipitation on the planet, as well
as the bumpiest airplane rides.
This meteorologically active region, which gives off a constant vertical
updraft of air along its path, was known to sailors as ‘the
doldrums’ due to the absence of any refreshing breeze. But for passengers
on an airplane traveling over the ITCZ, the sensation can be much different.
Indeed, as
vertical-flowing air masses move upwards from the surface of the water,
sometimes at great speeds, airplanes may feel a lot like a roller coaster ride.
Meanwhile, storms in this volatile region can climb to 50,000 feet, thus
forcing pilots, who usually stay at an altitude of 35,000 feet, to find a way
to skirt them.
Tragically,
it seems that the pilots of Air France 447 met exactly this sort of perfect
storm.
William
Voss, head of the Flight Safety Foundation, told Bloomberg that there was an
“explosion of weather” along the flight route of the doomed
aircraft where three storm fronts converged.
“If
you take a look at the satellite information online it was like an explosion of weather at
the time the Air France flight would have been trying to pick its way through
the Intertropical Convergence Zone,” he said.
“The
area of weather along that route of flight wasn’t even there when the
aircraft was leaving the coast,” Voss added.
But for the
most part, these transatlantic trips, as every seasoned pilot and passenger will
tell you, are usually uneventful. That optimistic point of view was greatly
challenged on June 1, however, when a state-of-the-art Airbus A330-203 vanished
over a remote stretch of the Atlantic Ocean four hours after it departed Rio de
Janiero, Brazil for Paris, France.
Although the
exact cause of the tragedy may never be fully known, most investigators already
agree on one thing: severe weather conditions played an important part. And
that conclusion is leading some climatologists to wonder if the airlines are
properly prepared for a world of higher temperatures, and therefore more
stressful flight conditions in the future.
“A
consequence of global warming is that the frequency and severity of such events
(severe weather conditions) is higher,” Alexei Kokorin, head
of Russia’s World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Program, told RT. “Unfortunately, the risk for
airplanes, especially in tropical areas above water, will be higher. This could
be difficult for pilots to understand.”
Kokorin said
that global weather conditions are becoming more severe, and the cause goes
back to one source: the acceleration of the greenhouse effect due to the
activities of man on earth.
“We
are seeing the same with other (meteorological) events… We see more
powerful typhoons than before. We see more powerful cyclones from the North
Atlantic, which causes very heavy rainfall and floods in Europe. These are
different events of the same reason: warmer surface of the ocean due to global
warming, which is a result of the greenhouse effect, unfortunately man
made,” he
said.
The
climatologist then explained why increased global temperatures could make
flying in some parts of the world especially challenging.
“If
the temperature of the water surface is higher, this produces a stronger
convective movement of the air and a high probability of very severe
thunderstorms.”
Kokorin then
advised that airlines consider using “safer routes” to avoid severe
weather patterns in the future.
“Air
companies should use maybe a bit more safe routes to… minimize the risks
that airplanes have with very serious convective movements of air,” Kokorin said, before
acknowledging that more intense ‘convective movement of air’ is not
just limited to the tropic regions. “Sometimes
it may happen not just in the tropics; therefore we must monitor these
conditions around the world.”
Industry
experts all seem unanimous in the belief that modern aircraft can handle
anything that Mother Nature can throw at them. Indeed, pilots regularly share
their experiences about having their aircraft hit by a bolt of lightning, or
bounced by bone-breaking turbulence. And at the time of this writing, French
media is beginning to wonder if pilot error, as opposed to bad weather per se,
was the real culprit.
Airbus will
advise its pilots on how to handle severe weather conditions, Le Monde reported today.
The information will remind pilots to maintain adequate speed during moments of
high turbulence, as well as keep the plane from banking too sharply.
Some
observers interpret this to mean that investigators might know the real cause
of the accident but aren't saying.
“If
they know what happened, they have a duty to make a recommendation, for safety
reasons,”
Jean Surrat, a retired airline pilot, told Agence France Presse. “The first thing you do when you
fly into turbulence is to reduce speed to counter its effects. If you reduce
speed too much you stall.”
However,
this version of events doesn’t mesh with the present theory, based on the
widely scattered wreckage of the aircraft, and in-flight data sent from the
plane's on-board computer, that the aircraft must have come apart while in
mid-flight.
One Russian
commercial pilot, Alexander, who requested that his last name not be used, said
that the absence of radio communication from the pilots to ground control seems
to prove the plane experienced some sort of “catastrophic” damage
in flight.
“Because
the aircraft’s last automated messages was sent by the onboard computer
system to another computer at the airport, without any communication that we
know of from the pilots,
suggests to me the plane
broke apart in flight,” the veteran pilot said. "I am even tempted to believe that
a bolt of lightning punched a hole in the aircraft."
Meanwhile,
Russian General Pyotr Deinekin, a former commander of the Russian Air Force,
postulated the tempting theory that although the flight crew was equipped with “onboard devices enabling it to
see a dangerous situation beforehand” the pilots would have
needed “great
courage” to turn their planes back to base due to financial
considerations.
“Since
this (turning a plane around) involves great financial losses for the airline,
the captain apparently decided to continue the flight, which ended up
tragically,”
Deinekin told Interfax.
This theory
brings to mind the crash of a Pulkovo Airlines flight in August 2006 after the
pilot made an attempt to fly over a storm, instead of turning around.
Russia’s
Interstate aviation Committee blamed the crash, which killed 170 aboard the
Tupolev TU-154, on pilot error.
Marc Morano
Executive Editor/Chief Correspondent
Climate Depot
1875 Eye Street, NW
Fifth Floor
Washington, D.C. 20006
202-536-5052
Morano@ClimateDepot.com
www.ClimateDepot.com