[2024-07] Global Assessment of Climate Change Impact on Future Aviation Operations
| Joon Young, Kwak |
| Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy, KAIST |
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| Hyungjun, Kim |
| Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy, KAIST |
Abstract
As climate change is accelerating, aircraft performance is also affected by climate change and the variations of aircraft performance are critical to maintain aviation operational readiness. Future climate will change air temperature and air pressure simultaneously, and both factors have different scales of impact on air lift. The variations in air lift affect the maximum takeoff weight, which is critical to aviation operations. Especially, as Air Force is required to sustain emergency takeoff operational readiness and operational range to protect national security, the performance of aircraft must be monitored seamlessly.
To establish new thresholds to monitor air lift which is affecting runway operations and to assess strategic circumstances by climate change, air lift is estimated in perspective of air temperature and air pressure. By verifying estimation of air lift from the past to the future, aviation operators could create new kinds of information both applied into short-term operational decision-making and long-term strategic decision-making. The impact on runway operations is not fully understood only with temperatures, however, using both temperature and pressure could enhance the understanding on the impact of climate change on operational readiness and strategic advantages. National security could realize which regions are more vulnerable in which time, thereby fixing weak points of friendly regions and seeking weak points of hostile regions.
In the literature, temperatures are usually analyzed to assess the impact on aircraft performance. However, daily minimum or maximum temperatures are only able to analyze once in 24 hours, while the military operations are required to be scheduled in few-hours unit. Moreover, pressure or other factors affecting on air lift is not considered as importantly as temperature. Thus, air temperature and air pressure are used at the same time to estimate air lift and to assess how they could impact on departure or landing.
In this research, climate change is analyzed in the past and the future, respectively. To track the climate change from the past, ERA5 reanalysis data is used to analyze impact of temperature and pressure changes on air density, air lift, and takeoff weight. For the future projection, CMIP6 projections with SSP scenarios are used. The impact may vary by scenarios, regions, future periods, seasons, and diurnal times. Periods are processed by 10-years in every two decades. It includes 1980-1989, 2000-2009, 2020-2029, 2040-2049, 2060-2069, and 2080-2089. Climate factors are calculated by average in every period, region, or diurnal hour. Regionally, United States and China are primarily analyzed to compare the regional difference of the impact. In the future studies, regional scope could be expanded globally, including Middle East and etc.
Comparing by periods, it can be analyzed in which period the more drastic impact is expected on regional air operations. Comparing by regions, it can be analyzed where would be more vulnerable than the surroundings. Comparing by diurnal hours, the operators could determine how to allocate the flights from which bases to which bases to maintain national operational readiness. With this intelligence and climate information, aviation operators could improve vulnerable sites and figure out where hostile air operations would be restricted.
In preliminary results, each region shows different seasonal patterns on takeoff weight loss. In the United States, western regions have lost more payload during summer, while eastern regions have lost more during winter. In the United States, variability of climate change effects was bigger during daytime, while in China, climate change effects were shifting to increases both on air temperature and air pressure. In short, the variability and the vulnerability of climate change vary by regions, seasons, and diurnal times.
Military aviation operational decisions should consider more complicated situations. It may include sensitive intelligence. Air operational readiness is important to national security, so it could be determined in more details with strategic climate information. Vulnerable regions in domestic borders can be protected in advance, and strategic plans might be revised in more effective ways. In the same way, it can be used in real-time monitoring of operational readiness status.
Keywords: Climate Change, Air Density, Air Lift, Takeoff Weight, Aviation Operations 
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