Singapore Airlines made international news earlier this month when severe turbulence caused one death and more than 30 injured. Then, a few days later, a a flight attendant broke his back during severe turbulence on a Turkish Airlines flight.
Several other incidents of severe turbulence This week’s news suggests that the turmoil may have really gotten worse. Then again, we also live in a time where the airline industry is subject to much closer scrutiny, so it’s also possible that we’ll hear more about it because people are already paying attention to it. A review of recent research, however, shows that this is not the case.
For example, there is an article from 2023 written by Mark C. Prosser, researcher at the University of Reading studied trends in clear-air turbulence, a type of turbulence that occurs without clouds or thunderstorms, and the results don’t paint a pretty picture. While mild or greater CAT increased by only 17% in the North Atlantic between 1979 and 2020, moderate or greater CAT increased by 37% and severe or greater CAT jumped by 55%. So it’s not just that turbulence is happening more frequently. We are also seeing more severe turbulence.
There is also an article from 2017 by Dr. Paul D. Williams, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, also a co-author of the previous study. The paper used a computer model to estimate how bad the turbulence would get when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles. According to the study, mild, moderate and severe turbulence can be expected to increase by 59, 94 and 149 percent, respectively. So expect the bad turbulence to only get worse in the future. These results are also supported by another paper from 2023. written by Dr. Soo-Hyun Kim of Seoul National Universitywhich found that we can expect climate change to worsen all types of turbulence, not just clear-air turbulence.
In a phone interview with Jalopnik, Dr. John A. Knox, an aviation turbulence researcher at the University of Georgia, added additional context:
There is therefore indeed an anecdotal situation caused by highly publicized events. And then once you have one, the media is much more likely to move on to the next one. Because then if there’s another one and another one, then the audience is prepared for that. This seems to be an emerging trend. But there’s also research that’s been done that I think demonstrates quite conclusively that we’re seeing more clear-air turbulence, particularly in the North Atlantic and the Northern Hemisphere. So it’s a bit of both.
Knox also pointed out that in the case of the Singapore Airlines flight, it was likely flying through a thunderstorm and therefore experienced a different and more severe type of turbulence than most flights experience. As he put it: “Clear-air turbulence is high-altitude turbulence away from thunderstorms and usually, but not always, associated with the jet stream. So if you’re flying through a thunderstorm, it’s a little different.
This of course raises the question of how much climate change is making turbulence worse. According to Knox, this can be attributed in part to warmer water and greater humidity in the air. “We are adding fuel to the fire to cause more storms,” he said. This also creates a stronger temperature gradient in the upper troposphere, the part of the atmosphere below the stratosphere where planes fly. Knox added:
Warmer ocean water and warmer surface temperatures lead to warmer air containing more water vapor, and this is the fuel for thunderstorms. So it’s entirely plausible that in the future the storms we experience will be more severe than they are now, and it has already been shown that we get shorter and heavier bursts of rain than previously in parts of the United States. So if this is already the case, it seems like a win for the future. And so if you’re flying around more vigorous thunderstorms or trying to fly above them, it’s very plausible that you’ll have more convection-related turbulence. It could be anywhere obviously, but it’s probably more dominant at low latitudes because, frankly, we don’t have as many jet streams at low latitudes.
But it’s not just about more and stronger storms:
This is important for wind, because at mid-latitudes this temperature gradient drives wind. This is a famous relationship in meteorology called the law of thermal wind. So, “thermal” means temperature and wind means wind. And if you have a strong temperature gradient, going from warm to cold, from low latitudes to high latitudes, that means that in between, at mid-latitudes, the wind blows stronger, and it blows from west to east. As this temperature gradient increases at cruising altitudes, the winds become stronger. This will cause more of what we call shear or vertical wind shear, which is the change in horizontal wind as you increase in altitude. And that leads to turbulence.
So we have an increased temperature gradient in the middle and upper troposphere that leads to faster jet streams, and we’ve seen that. There have been reports of planes traveling faster, well, not really, but faster than the speed of sound relative to the ground due to the amazing jet stream. So faster winds mean more wind shear, which means, at scales we can’t resolve with computer models, several things: gravity waves and instabilities. These are small-scale types of waves and instabilities that, on the scale of an airplane, ultimately cause shaking. In the same way that a wave breaks on the beach and you see all the foam due to air in the water, there are waves and instabilities that occur in the atmosphere that lead to the same kind of situation, but you don’t. see the foam if there are no clouds. So you are crossing a turbulent region without knowing it. And that’s why you have turbulence in clear air.
While it would probably be a stretch to call Knox a doomer, while discussing the future of air travel, he didn’t seem particularly optimistic. And yet he also said we must not accept a future where serious injuries and deaths are commonplace. After all, airplanes already have technology proven to prevent most injuries from extreme turbulence: seat belts.
I think on a global scale we will see more turbulence because it is likely, from the point of view of what is called convective turbulence or turbulence due to convection — a fancy name for thunderstorms — and also, in At the same time, at mid-latitudes due to changes in the jet stream. So wherever you are, I think it will probably be more. Will this result in more injuries and deaths? I hope not, because there is a very easy way to avoid this, which is to sit with your seat belt fastened, as they say. Serious injuries happen when people are not buckled up, either the crew doing something and they are not buckled up, or the passengers ignoring the seat belt sign and not understanding why you have the seat belt sign safety in the middle of a flight. Well, that’s why.
So I don’t think it’s obvious that we need to have more injuries and certainly not more deaths. We just need to make people understand that they’re not kidding when they say to keep your seat belt on. You can get through a lot with a good seat belt, but if you’re not wearing your seat belt and you briefly experience G forces that are about one or more Gs, then you’re going to hit your head and break your seat. neck. This is how you can die.
It’s not exactly good news, but at least you now know you’re not imagining things. The turbulence that the Singapore Airlines flight experienced may be a different, less common type of turbulence than you usually experience on an airplane, but turbulence across the board is worse than it was In previous decades, human-caused climate change has been the cause of this turbulence. and the situation is expected to only get worse. Also, wear your damn seat belt, folks. It’s not that difficult, and although it’s a little inconvenient, it’s much more practical than having to relearn how to walk because unexpected turbulence threw you headfirst into the luggage compartment.