Climate Change is responsible for many disastrous things but when a friend of mine mentioned to me that she seems to be feeling much more Turbulence when she flies when she used to i wasn't expecting it to be too blame.
In 2024, researchers from the University of Toulouse analysed historical atmospheric models and discovered that the climate conditions that cause severe plane turbulence have been increasing over the past decades, and those conditions are projected to get worse.
Since satellite data collection started 40 years ago, severe turbulence in the North Atlantic has increased by around 55% and the number of turbulence-related injuries since the 1980s have doubled with more hospilisations for broken bones, heart attacks, sprains and spinal injuries
Google states that the technical definition of severe turbulence is any up-and-down movement of a plane that applies a force greater than 1.5 g's to the occupants of the plane when a plane passes through a pocket of variable-density air.
Air turbulence occurs when a plane hits pockets of variable air density around the skies of the jet stream and as global warming heats up the seas and skies near the equator, the temperature differences in the jet stream's lower and higher latitudes become more extreme. Such differences amplify the strength of the jet stream, and, in turn, increase the strength and frequency of its air density.
Not sure if engineers can make changes to a plane to make it less susceptible to turbulence but if not then it has to come down to the computer weather modeling to advise the pilots of areas to avoid although estimates put the current accuracy to forecast unstable air at around 75% of the time.
Karma maybe that the problem is caused by global warming which was helped along by air travel which is a major contributor to global warming in the first place.
Monday, 27 April 2026
Turbulent Times Ahead
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