Climate Change Might Lengthen Transatlantic Flights

If there’s one thing to get more people concerned about climate change, is it the possibility it will lengthen intercontinental flights full of weird smells and screaming tots?

Probably not, but longer flights might be a looming reality for people traveling from London to New York, according to a new study in Environmental Research Letters. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 could speed up the jet stream—that lofty, east-flowing wind that controls so much of our weather. That means pilots could leap into it and shorten their mean cruising time between Heathrow and JFK by 4 minutes. Conversely, planes traveling from Heathrow to JFK will battle stronger winds and see times extended by more than 5 minutes, according to Paul Williams, a research fellow in the meteorology department at the U.K.’s University of Reading.