Climate Change Could Bump Up Instances Of Turbulence

Apr 11, 2013
Originally published on April 11, 2013 5:49 pm



Bring on the air sickness bags and light up the fasten seatbelt sign. A new study finds that flights are going to become more turbulent due to climate change. Paul Williams led the study. It's been published in the journal Nature Climate Change and he joins me now from Vienna. Welcome to the program.

PAUL WILLIAMS: Hi, Melissa, it's a pleasure to be here.



BLOCK: Clear air turbulence, in other words, not turbulence caused by a storm, right? And is that more dangerous because of what pilots can detect on their radar?

WILLIAMS: That's exactly right. We all know that if a plane flies through a cloud or a thunderstorm, that is a pretty bumpy experience, but that's not the kind of turbulence we've looked at here. We're talking about the kind of turbulence you experience when you're flying above the clouds and above storms. You could literally say it comes out of the blue. You're flying through clear blue skies, maybe the seatbelt sign is switched off and people are wandering about the plane.

The conditions seem to be smooth and all of a sudden, you can hit turbulence unexpectedly that the pilot could not see from the cockpit window and the fancy electronics onboard the plane can also not detect this kind of turbulence. So it's particularly dangerous to air passengers. It's not just about drinks being knocked over. This is actually a serious problem that does injure many people.

BLOCK: Now, we just were talking about the jet stream. Does this only affect flights going across the Atlantic?

WILLIAMS: So far, we've only crunched the numbers over the North Atlantic sector, but the jet stream, in fact, does not stop in the Atlantic sector. It goes all the way around the world and comes back on itself forming a closed loop. And it is becoming more intense everywhere. So it would be a reasonable hypothesis to suggest that the sort of increases we're seeing in the Atlantic sector may also be seen in the Pacific sector and in other parts of air space.

But we haven't crunched the numbers yet. That's what we really want to do next.







BLOCK: I've been talking with Paul Williams. He's an atmospheric scientist at the University of Redding. Thanks so much for talking to us.

WILLIAMS: Thanks, Melissa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.