No passenger likes to experience it, but frequent flyers will need to get used to increasingly bumpy air travel because clear-sky turbulence has increased significantly over the past four decades.
Scientists had already been warning that the warming caused by climate change would cause alterations in the air currents in the upper atmosphere, known as jet streams, and that would translate into more turbulence in flights. Now, an analysis of climate data from 1979 to 2020 by British meteorologists has found that the forecasts have come true and that the impact of global warming on clear-sky turbulence is even greater than theoretical models predicted.
According to a study by Mark Prosser of the University of Reading and colleagues, the total annual duration of severe turbulence in the North Atlantic (a region traversed by some of the world’s busiest flight paths) has exceeded 17 0.7 hours in 1979 to 27.4 hours in 2020, representing an increase of 55%. And moderate turbulence grew by 37%, going from 70 to 96.1 hours per year in the same period.
Turbulence in clear skies is caused by chaotic air eddies, by “bumps” invisible to the naked eye due to the collision of air bags moving at different speeds.
And, according to experts, that they are now forming more, more frequently and severely has to do with changes in the jet stream that causes global warming. Warmer air drives stronger winds and vertical or horizontal changes in wind speed or direction, or both, leading to increased turbulence.
And, according to Prosser’s study, while the largest increases have been in the North Atlantic and the United States, significant increases are also being seen on routes traversing Europe, the Middle East, and the South Atlantic. And in all cases, above what the climate models predicted for the current level of global warming.
Therefore, Prosser predicts that the turbulence will continue to worsen as the weather changes. And this, in addition to giving the passengers and crew of the planes some hard times and forcing them to spend more time tied to their seats during the flight, will translate into more wear and tear on the planes and more expensive flights, because pilots they will have to divert flights to avoid areas of turbulence and that will entail higher fuel costs.
