Severe Turbulence Becoming More Common And More Dangerous On Flights
Climate change is causing an uptick in the occurrence of severe and unpredictable turbulence, and there is currently no way to detect when such turbulence will occur.
One of the most dangerous and terrifying scenarios that occur on commercial airline flights is a sudden drop in altitude, otherwise known as turbulence. Some major airlines have reported an increase in the amount of turbulence flights are encountering in the skies as well as the velocity at which they are hitting the aircraft. The culprit is a phenomenon called clear-air turbulence that will strike randomly, it occurs in skies that are clear and pilots are unable to anticipate them happening.
If you have experienced any type of turbulence before you can attest to the panic you feel when one moment you’re enjoying an in-flight movie and the next moment you feel like you are on the world’s scariest rollercoaster. However, in this scenario, you are tens of thousands of feet in the sky and not on any type of rail system affixed to the ground. These events are terrifying to passengers, and we are seeing them happening more frequently, and they are more severe than in the past.
NPR interviewed passenger Ingrid Weisse after an Alaska Airlines flight traveling from Portland, Oregon to her home in Hawaii experienced a 45-minute battle with clear-air turbulence. She said, “There was lots of screaming in the cabin. A flight attendant was hit by an ice bucket that became a projectile. So many people got sick from the sudden changes in altitude that flight attendants had to hand out more vomit bags.” If you take a second to let that quote sink into your imagination you can almost smell the fear of the passengers on board as they start to quietly think to themselves that the plane might be going down and this is the end for them.
Atmospheric scientists agree that the main cause for the uptick in the frequency of this type of turbulence is simply climate change. Above 15,000 feet, the greenhouse gases that we have been emitting into the atmosphere for over 100 years are warming up the air in those upper layers. It’s a similar concept to how tornados form when warm air and cold air collide, creating intense thunderstorms which produce wind speeds that could spawn a twister.
According to Paul Williams a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading reports, “Since satellites began observing in 1979, the amount of wind shear has grown by 15%” When using this climate model to then forecast future turbulence events they are anticipating it to increase by triple the frequency that we see today over the next three to six decades. As they say, “Passengers buckle your seatbelts, we may be in for a bumpy ride.”
Even though it is extremely unlikely that even extreme turbulence would cause an airplane to crash, it does cause a majority of in-flight injuries. We hear horrifying stories of passengers and flight crews being catapulted head-first into the ceiling of the aircraft, sometimes leaving a dent at the point of impact. Between 2009 and 2022 there were 163 serious injuries reported to the National Transportation Safety Board ranging from major bone fractures, serious burns, internal bleeding, or other injuries that required a minimum of a two-day hospital stay.
Flight crews are the ones that take 80 percent of the brunt of those injuries. While everyone is buckled up they are the ones walking around the cabin assisting customers or rolling around 300 lbs. metal carts which I would imagine really hurt if they slam into you. They currently don’t have any system that will detect these turbulent events prior to them happening but they are experimenting with lidar, also known as light detection and ranging which is similar to radar but uses light waves instead of radio waves.
If the number of occurrences is expected to triple we need to really find a reliable prediction tool or we could anticipate that serious injury figure to triple as well. However, there is no more proven prevention tool to help you stay safe while in the air, and that is the good old trusty seatbelt. If it’s buckled you won’t have to experience the joy of being catapulted out of your seat and head first into the overhead storage or ceiling.
