BRAZILIAN AIRPLANE CRASH (62 KILLED) AND CLIMATE CHANGE THAT MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO IT

The rapidly up-trending changes in climate are making air travel riskier for passengers according to numerous experts and news media investigation 

Higher global temperatures and changes in wind sheer and movement, which are expected to keep increasing, will cause more frequent turbulence impacting the plane's lift while flying and the thinner hot air also make take-offs more complex, as being reported. 

It is projected to become 4 times stronger/more frequent by the 2050s affecting passengers' behavior in the cabinet and reducing the number of passengers on flights

The so-called clear-air turbulence is invisible and is one of the most unpredictable #weather phenomena and flight professionals and meteorologists have been urged to work together to improve its forecast and detectability 

Entering into these space areas conditions the aircraft can suffer a sudden drop in altitude as happened numerous times this year with the two most propagated in the international media being a Singapore Airline flying from London to Singapore (with one person dying and many getting injured for being tossed around) and a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin 

It has already been reported that temperatures got so hot in some locations that runaways are melting

This increased turbulence does not only affect airplane flights, it has been impacting significantly the hang-gliding tandem flights in Rio de Janeiro, one of the topmost sites in the world for this tourist activity, with greater turbulence restraining several hundreds of flights and a financial loss to the local controlling entity (first lost since the 1970s) because the professionals had to stay grounded even when the skies were blue and clean, normally ideal for the flight experience (see my post about it)

So, strong turbulence does not affect only higher attitude flights but lower ones as well like the one in Rio at about 800 meters (2.600 ft). One can feel the heat emanating from the floor and the face of the local solid rock mountains

With respect to the recent plane crash in São Paulo, Brazil killing all 62 persons on August 9, 2024, it was a Voepass ATR 72-500 with twin turboprop engines built by a French-Italian consortium and designed for short-haul regional fights up to a range of 900 NM/ 1.670 Km, with flight speeds of 480 Km/h or 288 miles/h 

The craft is popular worldwide for various reasons, one of them is that it is more fuel-economical than jet planes and it can take off land on short and narrow runways. It normally flies at lower altitudes (6.000m/ 19.700 ft) than the usual jet airplanes (from 30 to 51.000 ft+ depending on the size/type of plane)

According to the company's business owner, the plane had undergone maintenance the day before the flight and all features were functioning OK. The trip was hovering well at some 5.000 meters (16.400 ft) and all of a sudden when approaching São Paulo's destination, according to the flight-specialized site FlighRadar, it suffered in a time span of less than 1 minute, a sudden drop of almost 4.000m (13.150 ft)  to a level above 1.000m (3.300 ft) 

It is important to note that during the end of July and through August, the surrounding ground areas were suffering unusually extremely hot and dry weather (especially for winter time), with the Brazilian authorities issuing a "code orange" alert of high temperatures with very low humidity

Similar extreme conditions happened again during and around the week of August  18 which led to the "catastrophic" wildfires in São Paulo State which some called "apocalyptic" (see my recent article about it). The humidity level in some parts of the State reached an alarming, health-threatening level of 8% which is extremely low compared to the Sahara Desert's average of 25%

Under these extreme conditions, the soil emits up so much heat (infrared energy) that makes the surrounding air very thin (lift) and generates stronger clear-air turbulence which is caused by vertical sheer events, with 2 air masses overlapping each other and moving at different speeds and/or directions

This brings us back to the ATR 72-500 flight. Overnight of the flight came in a rapidly moving cold weather front from Antarctica which made temperatures drop radically and caused the authorities to issue an alert of turbulence, thunderstorms, and "severe ice" in the region exactly around the altitudes that the ATR was flying (around aeronautical levels of 120 and 210 and it was flying at 170 according to authorities). 

The weather was cloudy preventing the pilots from a complete view of the region. The real causes of the accident will take some time to be made officially public but the unusual weather conditions with a combination of high heat/low humidity in the previous days of the flight (up lifting hot air) combined with a sudden arrival of an Antarctican cold front causing a major temperature drop overnight and severe icing conditions might be a major contributing factor for accident

Experts consider the ice building/accumulation on the attack (front) of the wings as a significant factor. A little earlier in the day another ATR flight flying in the opposite direction was photographed by a passenger with ice covering part of the wings 

Like other aircraft, the ATRs have de-icing systems on the wings to prevent ice accumulation and flight destabilization but in this case, they might have failed. But considering the extremely rapid weather variations around the days of the accident, likely induced by #climatechange, the stormy cloudy weather (low visibility) further deterred the pilots from fixing the impending situation   

As per a professor of aeronautics at the University of São Paulo, the ice may have formed so rapidly that the pilots did not have enough time to take the necessary actions

Observers on the ground heard a very loud noise coming from the engines saying the plane, twisted/ stalled with no horizontal speed started plunging vertically down (like a "sheet of paper") in what is known as a flat spin and crashing to the ground

This might become the first known case of our #climatecrisis inducing the crash of a commercial airplane and more might be expected with the up-trending rapidly increasing #climatechange which we will have to learn to live with this New Climate Normal (#NCN)

#globalwarming #climatecrises #climatehell #globalboiling #climatecasino #climatechaos #climateaction #climateemergency