Climate change and Turbulence
As an enthusiastic traveler and the Covid restrictions removed, I have hopped on many flights to different parts of the world. During these trips, however, I found the flights have become bumpier than three years ago. So I set out on the journey of finding out why.
So the first question I asked is how is turbulence even created？
There are four main causes of turbulence, and all are responsible for flight turbulences. Mechanical turbulence, which is mainly caused by rough terrain and high wind speeds. This is why plane rides are much more rough if it is flying through mountainous areas or plateaus. The second type is thermal turbulence. These are usually found in the summer and in places that have huge differences in landscapes. Such as between a sandy wasteland and a grassy meadow. This difference would also lead to thunderstorms in those areas. The third type would be frontal turbulence. This would be caused by two air masses of different temperatures meeting each other. The warmer air mass would head upwards while the cooler one sinks down, creating turbulence in the process. The last one would be the wind shear, which is clean air turbulence that is usually found at higher latitudes. This is caused by the change in wind speed or wind direction, which usually occurs when there’s a drastic temperature change. All four would be factors when deciding whether the plane would face severe turbulence.
So now we know how turbulence is created, the question became “Why do I feel like the rides got rough? Is it just my thoughts or there’s actually something behind it?” I turned to the internet for an explanation and surprisingly found out that global warming is the pushing factor behind turbulent planes.
As stated, there are four kinds of turbulences, three of which are strongly connected with temperature difference and temperature change. This is why global warming would play such an important role when it comes to flight turbulences even when the two phases seem to have no connection at all.
During my research, I realized that the study of global warming connecting with turbulence has begun a decade ago. The evidence, though, only came out of the woods recently. As Maddie Molloy mentioned in her article, “Scientists at Reading University in the UK … found that severe turbulence had increased 55% between 1979 and 2020 on a typically busy North Atlantic route.” The rise in severe turbulence is mostly found in wind shears. As mentioned, wind shears are clean air turbulences, which would make it hard to detect on radars compared to turbulences due to storms. In order to avoid severe consequences caused by piolets steering into wind shears without warnings, satellites and turbulence detectors have been made to analyze the structure and the shape of the jet stream. This would allow the pilots to receive information about the situation facing them easier, especially at times when clean air turbulence is getting more and more severe.
Now some may ask “Why make a fuss about turbulence? It would only be a bumpy ride.” As a regular traveler, that is definitely not the case. In raw numbers, the aviation industry loses between $150m and $500m in the US alone annually due to turbulence, including wear and tear on aircraft, states the BBC article. Not only so, but the environmental costs due to more turbulence also can not be unseen as the crew uses significantly more fuel to stable the plane. Moreover, turbulence would cause back and neck injuries. Around 58 people in the United States are injured every year by turbulence. That might not seem to be a big number at a glance but with the severity of turbulence and number of flights on the rise, that number could be on the increase.
After all, this is another example of how humans’ inventions turned back to us. With more planes in the sky, emissions would increase the progress of global warming, leading to more turbulence that would demand more fuel to get through, leaving it in a vicious cycle. The sad point is, there’s really no solution to this problem yet. All humans could do is strive and try to look for cleaner energy to replace older ones, and we all know that is a hard and lengthy process while air traffic cannot stop.
