(Photo by Al Macias-KJZZ)

An airplane taking off from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

Photo by Andrew Bernier - KJZZ

The equation for calculating lift as told by Professor Bill O'Hara. Use at your own discretion.

Temperatures at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix have been known to hit 120 degrees, sometimes higher. Warmer days due climate change may affect how airplanes take off, and raise ticket prices.

Hotter days at Sky Harbor and other airports may make take-offs more difficult unless airports and airlines make some changes, which will likely come with costs. Climate Scientist Ethan Coffel released a report showing how the thinner air density of hotter days will disrupt the aviation industry.

“As the temperature rises, the air density goes down" Coffel said. "So, in less-dense air, an airplane wing has to go faster in order to produce the same amount of lift. And that means an airplane will have to go faster in order to take off on a hotter day than on a cooler one.”

The study compared current and projected temperature models at airports in Phoenix, Washington, D.C., New York and Denver. Those locations were chosen because of either high temperatures, high elevation or short runways, or a combination of the three.

Professor and former pilot Bill O’Hara at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott explained what type of consideration goes into changing planes and wings when temperatures go up.

“In order to develop lift we gotta design a wing with certain lift characteristics," O'Hara said. "So we change the wing design in order to accommodate the mission. We try to make airplanes do a number of things, but as the air gets more dense then you can get more, for lack of a technical term, more oomph out of the wing.”

But hotter temperatures expands gas molecules, creating more space between them and less matter in air for wings to lift off of. This requires faster speeds for wings to hit and lift off of the less-dense air molecules.

Temperature increase may lead to more possible weight restriction days, which may mean fewer passengers, less cargo and more expensive ticket prices. While this could be bad news for Phoenix, Coffel said we may be in better shape than other cities. He argues the best adaptation for airports is to extend runways.

“Phoenix has pretty long runways and at pretty low elevation, about a thousand feet, and so the impacts there are actually less than they are in New York or Washington where the runways are relatively short and we also see similar if not greater rises in temperature,” Coffel said.

Other solutions are shifting more flights to cooler evening times and increasing the size of planes, with bigger wings that are able to carry bigger loads.