Clear-Air Turbulence (CAT) has been in the news a lot in the last month. Climate change is making CAT significantly worse. Between 1979 and 2020, the most severe CAT has increased by 55% due to climate change, according to peer reviewed science.
Imagine you are on an aircraft flying along smoothly, and your plane, suddenly and without any advance warning, enters a void like a vacuum (air pocket) and drops like a rock for several seconds, then is jolted back upwards as it exits the air pocket.
Anybody and any object within the plane not securely buckled down ends up being tossed to the ceiling and then back to the floor in seconds.
This very situation has occurred several times in just the last month causing mainly passenger injuries and even one death. In one case, several people ended up having to be extracted from the overhead bin luggage compartments. Many people were seriously injured.
Commercial Jumbo Jets carrying 350 passengers or more are running into CAT more frequently. CAT does not appear on radar, and the air pockets are invisible to the eye, not being associated with any clouds.
CAT is most likely to occur near the tropopause, which is the dividing zone between the troposphere and the stratosphere (altitude varies from about 7 km at the poles to about 17 km at the equator). It also is more likely near the jet stream locations.
Some relevant links on CAT follow:
Is climate change making turbulence worse?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv22endle1no
Flight turbulence increasing as planet heats up – study
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65844901
Peer reviewed scientific paper in Geophysical Research Letters journal (open source: free)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023gl103814
Abstract
“Clear-air turbulence (CAT) is hazardous to aircraft and is projected to intensify in response to future climate change. However, our understanding of past CAT trends is currently limited, being derived largely from outdated reanalysis data. Here we analyze CAT trends globally during 1979–2020 in a modern reanalysis data set using 21 diagnostics. We find clear evidence of large increases around the midlatitudes at aircraft cruising altitudes. For example, at an average point over the North Atlantic, the total annual duration of light-or-greater CAT increased by 17% from 466.5 hr in 1979 to 546.8 hr in 2020, with even larger relative changes for moderate-or greater CAT (increasing by 37% from 70.0 to 96.1 hr) and severe-or-greater CAT (increasing by 55% from 17.7 to 27.4 hr). Similar increases are also found over the continental USA. Our study represents the best evidence yet that CAT has increased over the past four decades.”
If you fly, keep your seatbelt on at all times. Hopefully, laser radar technologies can be developed and fitted to commercial aircraft in the future to detect and warn pilots on CAT; at present airplanes are flying blind with regard to CAT.
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Source: paulhenrybeckwith