Impacts of Climate Change on Aviation: Aircraft Weight Restrictions Due to Higher Temperatures

Prior work has demonstrated that rising temperatures due to climate change may necessitate increasingly frequent takeoff weight restrictions for commercial aircraft on certain routes. The precise amount of required weight restriction and its cost across the airline industry, however, remains uncertain. In this study, a model of maximum allowable takeoff weight for a flight at a given airport, temperature, and elevation is created using aircraft manufacturer’s data. Using this model, future weight restriction is studied for specific, real-world commercial flight routes across projected future airline schedules, using temperature projections calculated from an ensemble of CMIP5 climate models. The frequency and magnitude of weight restriction events is analyzed, and uncertainty is robustly quantified. This analysis presents a step towards an estimate of the system-wide cost to the aviation industry due to rising temperatures.