Why All Planes Take This Overcrowded Path Across The Atlantic Ocean - Cheddar Explains

on an average summer night around 1 500 flights traverse the atlantic from the united states to europe and almost all take this one route like a highway a highway at rush hour these planes are separated by only 40 miles in distance and 25 miles laterally vertically they fly as close as 1000 feet to each other it takes an immeasurable amount of planning and precision but why would all of these planes take one route when they have the whole sky especially when that route is becoming more and more dangerous to this day crossing the atlantic is no easy feat and that's mostly because of the lack of radar all air traffic radar communication is through ground-based systems so when a plane travels across the ocean radar communication is limited so planes making the journey follow a structured set of routes called the north atlantic organized track system or nat ots these tracks ensure planes are adequately separated and are the reason you've never crashed every day four air traffic planning centers map out routes over the atlantic the first is the new york station that controls this area the next is gander newfoundland and it controls this portion of the atlantic then there's the santa maria oceanic control that covers this area north there's chanwick an amalgamation of prestwick scotland and shannon ireland pilots have to report their location every 14 minutes using a computer calculation of their longitude and latitude most of the time it works flawlessly coordinating a safe passage for the thousands of trips making the nightly journey but incidents still occur on february 19th of 2019 a boeing 787 was caught in a jet streak that pushed it to 801 miles an hour 200 miles an hour over their normal speed it broke the sound barrier and came eerily close to other planes in order to avoid incidents like this the path must be meticulously coordinated it's complicated so why do they take just one route it's actually because of a japanese meteorologist in the 1920s his name was wasabiro uishi and between 1923 and 1925 he completed almost 1 300 observations of fierce high-altitude winds so when he announced that he had discovered a high-altitude river of air in the sky he was pretty much ignored outside of japan that was a big mistake that year japan launched around 9 000 silk hydrogen balloons carrying bombs into this west east river of air around 300 made landfall in the u.s and in 1945 tragedy struck in bly oregon when a sunday school group stumbled across one of the bombs during an outing the pastor's wife and five students ages 8 to 15 died from the explosion after unknowingly picking up the bomb that river of air in the sky was now on the u.s military's radar and they called it the jet stream jet streams are very fast currents of air that blow generally from west to east all the way around the world in both hemispheres in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere and they reach their maximum speeds at altitudes of around 30 to 40 000 feet and of course that's a typical cruising altitude for a large commercial plane there are two crucial ingredients for a jet stream to form one of them is the rotation of the earth and the second one is the north-south temperature difference between the very warm tropical regions and a very cold polar regions you might think that the winds would simply blow in the north-south direction from warm to cold and indeed that is what they tried to do but no there's something called the coriolis force and that comes from the rotation of the earth and it deflects that natural north-south motion into an east-west motion and that's what gives birth to the jet stream jet streams blow in narrow bands with widths of a few hundred miles and thicknesses of less than three miles they typically average 100 miles per hour in the summer and they can reach speeds of 200 miles per hour in the winter u.s commercial pilots began taking the jet stream into account as early as 1952 it was just practical when traveling from west to east it was much more efficient to merge into the 100 mile per hour plus tailwinds and be ferried easily across the ocean it saved fuel and made flights shorter and less turbulent but there's one problem with the jet stream air traffic controllers and pilots must account for every day it's constantly shifting jet streams aren't fixed at a certain latitude they meander from north to south depending on the time of year and the position of the sun every morning at 7 00 am eastern standard time nats has to find it on their satellites and report the course to pilots they outline the day's flights requests for preferred routes and cruising altitudes this system has worked well since the 50s when it was put into place but that isn't to say that it'll keep working well that's because there's a big big problem looming on the horizon several passengers suffered broken bones clear air turbulence strikes without warning scientists at the university of redding published a study in 2019 that revealed significant changes in the jet stream between 1979 and 2017. they observed large increases in vertical shear over the north atlantic vertical wind shear is simply the fact that the higher up you go in the atmosphere the windier it gets but there's this other kind of turbulence that doesn't have any visual signature you can't see it from the cockpit even the radar the weather radar can't pick up this clear air turbulence so it's particularly hazardous and it's caused by vertical wind shear so as the wind shear gets stronger because of climate change we expect a lot more turbulence as well the team calls it one of the single largest anthropogenic changes to have occurred since satellite observations began but what's causing this gigantic change if you guessed climate change bingo highly fluctuating temperatures due to carbon emissions are to blame and if we assume that countries do not take drastic action to fix the climate crisis the amount of severe turbulence is expected to double or triple by 2050 to 2080. so this is not a hypothetical future change from climate model simulations that people might have some doubts over this has already happened since i was born and that's quite sobering for me in the late 70s the consequences won't just be increased turbulence related injuries like we're seeing right now remember when i said that the jet stream was basically a highway with a ton of traffic with 1 500 planes a day 40 miles horizontally apart 25 laterally and a thousand vertically that's fine when the highway is working but not if that highway turns into the tacoma narrows bridge some experts have speculated that the still rising increases in vertical shear will perhaps cause plane crashes in the jet stream if the danger is not taken into account for the short-term future this isn't a huge risk but as we get closer to the conditions that the university of redding team predicts it may significantly affect how the oceanic control centers planned flights even though the amount of flights have been significantly decreased due to coronavirus travel restrictions this is an issue that won't be going away in the next 30 to 50 years it may even affect how many flights there are and their prices one thing is for sure flying across the atlantic is going to become an even more bumpy ride what do you think of the increased turbulence in the jet stream let us know in the comments make sure you like this video click subscribe and don't forget to ring the bell for post notifications we'll see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 502,230

Rating: 4.7322083 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, cheddar explores, explainer, north atlantic tracks, transatlantic flight, airplanes, planes, jets, commercial flight, flight, radar, air traffic control, jet stream, atlantic ocean, weather, meteorology, turbulence, north atlantic flights, atlantic flights, travel, air planes, airport, air traffic, airplane highway, altitude, aviation, (NAT-OTS, tailwinds, flight time

Id: 3MjlqZtIpag

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021