This Air Force Squadron Is Key to DOD’s Plan For Climate Change
June 8, 2023 | By David Roza
For military planners, a change in the weather can impact a host of factors and decisions.
For instance, rising air temperature on Guam, a central hub of military operations in the Pacific, impacts the density of the air, which affects how much runway length a military aircraft needs to take off and how much gas, weapons, and cargo it might be able to carry.
“All of those calculations tie into larger strategies of how long our runways need to be, how many cargo aircraft we need, how much armament can fit on our planes, how powerful our helicopters need to be,” Lt. Col. Bill Danyluk, commander of the 14th Weather Squadron, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
There are several weather squadrons in the Air Force, many of which provide forecasts so that units can safely operate. Danyluk’s squadron, however, has a mission performed by no other unit in the military: predicting what the climate might be like more than 10 years from now, with calculations that include the effect of human emissions, rather than simply relying on historical climate data.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-weather-squadron-climate-change/
