It’s not just your imagination.

Flights are more turbulent than they used to be. And not just little bumps here and there.

We’re talking severe turbulence, the  kind that can throw loose objects and even people out of their  seats in the middle of a flight. It won’t happen on every flight and flying  is still one of the safest ways to travel. But turbulence is happening more often  and lasting longer than it used to.

The culprit? The climate crisis, of course. So fasten your seatbelts and make  sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their upright and locked  position, and let’s get into it. [♪ INTRO] If you’ve flown on an airplane before,  then you have probably felt turbulence.

One minute, it’s smooth sailing, then  the seatbelt sign dings, the whole plane is lurching, and someone a few rows  back may have lost their lunch. It happens because air is made of stuff: gases constantly swirling around our planet. And when your plane hits a  rough patch, you can feel it.

Those irregular movements  arise in a few different ways. Friction from features on  the ground, like mountains, can cause mechanical turbulence. That’s bumps in the flow of air, sort  of like white water rapids in a river.

Thermal turbulence, when hot  air rises and cool air falls, churns up the air around it. Then there’s frontal turbulence, associated with the large moving masses of cool air called fronts. The front creates turbulent swirls at the edge where it pushes warmer air out of the way.

You can also experience turbulence when  the air suddenly changes direction. This type, called wind shear,  can be caused by storms, the jet stream, or temperature  differences in the atmosphere. Most of the time, your pilot  will have enough information to avoid the most severe turbulence.

Thermal turbulence, for example, tends  to affect the air from ground-level to the tops of clouds, so you can avoid  it by flying around or above the clouds. But some turbulence is invisible. It’s called clear air turbulence.

Clear air turbulence accounts for almost  a quarter of weather-related accidents, including injuries and aircraft damage. Because they can’t see it coming,  pilots have to rely on weather forecasts and air traffic control to avoid the most  likely locations of clear air turbulence. Usually, passengers like you and me  will experience mild turbulence at most.

A bit bumpy, a bit unpleasant,  but nothing dangerous. But severe turbulence is out there, and  hitting it can have disastrous results. In May 2024, severe turbulence  on a Singapore Airlines flight caused the plane to drop 54  meters in less than 5 seconds.

More than a hundred people were  injured, and one person died of a suspected heart attack – the first  turbulence-related death in over 25 years. In this case, the turbulence may have  been related to storms in the region, although investigations are still  ongoing at the time this was written. This SciShow video is supported by Imprint.

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This story got a lot of people thinking: when did turbulence get this bad,  and what can we do to avoid it? First, research has shown that turbulence  has gotten more common over time. Experts are most worried about  increases in severe turbulence, especially when it’s also invisible.

In the last 40 years, there has been a 55%  increase in severe clear air turbulence over North America and Europe,  according to a 2023 study. The researchers measured turbulence in terms of how much time airplanes  spent in turbulent air per year. In a different paper from  2017, researchers set out to understand how climate change  is affecting turbulence.

First, researchers created a  simulation of the pre-industrial global atmosphere to estimate how  much turbulence was swirling around. Then, they modeled an atmosphere  with the greenhouse gas concentration that experts predict between 2050 and 2080. That helped them create a global map of the increase in clear-air turbulence, and… it’s a lot.

Globally, they estimate that clear air  turbulence will increase by 30 to 50 percent, depending on the time of year,  compared to pre-industrial levels. North America, Europe, and the North Pacific  could take the brunt of that increase. By the end of the century, climate  change could cause severe turbulence in the atmosphere to double…  though note that technically, it’s going from 1% overall to 2.

Experts do not all agree on exactly how  and where turbulence will get worse. It all comes down to how climate  change affects the jet streams, the massive rivers of air  that wrap around the planet. There are two main ways that climate change could affect jet streams and  the turbulence around them.

First, the horizontal temperature  difference in the atmosphere is shrinking. That means that the North and South  Poles are getting warmer faster than the tropics, so there  isn’t as much difference in temperature from equator to pole. That could make the jet stream  less stable, which would do something to the clear air turbulence around it, though experts disagree on exactly what.

Clear air turbulence tends to form  in certain areas around jet streams, so as jet streams become less  predictable, so does turbulence. There’s also bad news for  turbulence of the not-clear variety. The vertical temperature difference  in the atmosphere is growing.

The lower atmosphere is warming  faster than the upper atmosphere, so the two zones have a  bigger temperature difference. That could cause more storms, and more turbulence. But at least in this case  the pilot can see it coming.

So, what can we do? Right now, the pilots choose routes to avoid the worst turbulence, for everyone’s safety. Weather forecasts and radar on board  can detect upcoming storm clouds.

That way, pilots can choose  a route that keeps at least 32 kilometers between the plane and the storm. But recent research has shown that  storms can cause turbulence over 90 kilometers away, so maybe  that guideline needs an update. And that invisible clear air  turbulence is still a big challenge.

Experts hope that advances in LiDAR,  which uses lasers to detect irregularities in the atmosphere, could give pilots  the information they need to avoid it. And if you are really worried about turbulence, you have a few options to  stay safe during your travels. Like all the safety videos say,  you should wear your seatbelt whether the seat belt sign is on or not, because you might not get much  warning before hitting a bumpy patch.

Or, you could just fly less. Burning jet fuel contributes  to the climate crisis, so it couldn’t hurt to cut back, if you can. Besides, that’s one of the many  benefits of being on the ground.

You don’t have to worry about turbulence. [♪ OUTRO]