By AFP - Agence France Presse
Closure of Russian airspace increases CO2 emissions from air travel: Study
The closure of Russian airspace to Western airlines after the invasion of Ukraine caused planes to take a longer route, increasing carbon dioxide emissions from the planet-warming aviation sector, researchers said on Wednesday.
Many countries, especially NATO allies, closed their airspace to Russian aircraft after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Moscow reciprocated with retaliatory bans on Western airlines.
This caused an initial drop in flights between North America and Europe to East Asia, but as routes adjusted, airlines were forced to make significant detours to avoid Russian airspace.
This meant longer journeys to southern Russia or over the Arctic and more fuel burned in the process, said the authors of the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Communications Earth & Environment.
To better understand the environmental consequences, the researchers analyzed 750,000 flights made between March 2022 and December 2023, representing 1,100 of the approximately 90,000 flights made every day around the world.
Despite being only a fraction of the total, the extra distance traveled by these flights had “a notable impact on the overall carbon footprint of aviation,” said Nicolas Bellouin, co-author of the study from the University of Reading in the UK.
“These detour added 8.2 million tons of CO2 to global aviation emissions in 2023,” said Bellouin, a climate scientist currently studying the climate impact of aviation at the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute in France.
These major detours increased global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from aviation by one percent in 2023.
“On average, a diverted flight emits 18 extra tons of CO2, which is roughly equivalent to the emissions of a single short-haul flight,” said the study, noting that emissions of other pollutants almost certainly increased as well. ’
Russian airlines have been operating fewer long-haul flights since 2022, which may have prevented some emissions, the authors noted.
But more passengers traveling between Europe and Asia were likely transiting through the Middle East rather than opting for direct flights, the authors said.
This inefficiency means that the geopolitical situation “represents a major obstacle” to reducing CO2 emissions from aviation, they concluded.
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