Robert L. Vislocky, Ph.D.
From the faction “let’s scare the passengers on the plane without checking the data first” are a number of reports that appeared in the press about a month ago that climate change is causing the turbulence of the aircraft. Flying gets worse. Here is one such article from NPR, but you can find many more at the usual sites about the climate crisis (CNN, Washington Post, Newsweek, etc.):
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1166993992/turbulence-climate-change
The articles are of course combined with anecdotal observations and the usual reference to a climate model study with projections 60 years into the future. However, the strange thing is that none of the newsletters contain any actually turbulent data to see if this really becomes a problem in a warming world.
The chart below is from the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) 2021 safety research report on preventing turbulence-related injuries in airline operations. It shows the total number of accidents (light blue) and the number of accidents caused by earthquake turbulence (dark blue) per 100,000 flight hours over the past 30 years. An accident is defined as an incident where at least one passenger is seriously injured or the aircraft is significantly damaged. The NTSB concluded there was “no clear trend in turbulence-related accidents during this period.” Again, the real data contrasts with the frightening reports from the climate change community.
Source: https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.pdf
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