Is Clear Air Turbulence becoming more common?

Most of the recent widely publicized CAT injuries have been on long distance flights between Europe and South Asia.

One thing that’s happened in the past couple of years along that air corridor is the squeezing of flight paths out of Ukrainian, Russian, Israeli, and Afghan airspace.

Planes taking more circuitous routes, giving them less options to avoid weather conditions, much of the flight over hot mountainous terrain… could be a contributing factor to increasing incidents of dangerous turbulence affecting flights, even if the conditions themselves haven’t become more common.

This does not seem to be borne out by the accident statistics, which apparently show no trend in turbulence related accidents. (https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101....)

I don't know if there are other factors which might be masking a rise in incidence of CAT from accident stats?

> The Prosser report outlines one of the primary reasons for the increase in CAT events as the intensification of the jet streams, driven by the warming of the planet. As global temperatures rise, the temperature gradients between the equator and the poles become more pronounced, strengthening the jet streams and increasing the likelihood of turbulence .

I was under the impression that, as the poles are MORE affected by global warming, the jet stream is becoming weaker? is that incorrect?

I had never heard of Clear Air Turbulence until last month when I finally read the first Culture novel by Ian M. Banks: Consider Phlebas.

Now I know that it's the perfect name for a space pirate ship.

Shameless plug here. I work at SkyPath (https://skypath.io) we monitor and collect CAT data from 1000's of flights in real time and predict CAT events with the help of an AI model. Pilots are extremely happy with our solution, we signed several of the major airlines in US and have active evaluation programs with several others.

Is anyone aware of the feasibility of research into using LIDAR to detect CAT? This study from last October claims to have found a method for detecting CAT ahead of time with LIDAR: http://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023Photo..10.1185Z/abstrac...

This type of technology would be incredible in my opinion, and I’m also of the opinion that increased turbulence (assuming it is actually increasing) could be easily tied to climate change and the recent warming of the pacific and Atlantic oceans due to regulations on sulfur in cargo ship fuel (but that’s a tangent to this topic)

There is also just a huge increase in global air travel, which should increase the number of total incidents. The number of commercial flights doubled between 2004 and 2019, and is expected to continue on that trend for some time.

Could this be internet-enabled flight bias? Now that we have more and more WiFi enabled flights, more people posting about it on socials...so public awareness grows but as indicated before only incident-related stats are being recorded. One can extrapolate if incidents including damage or injury are not increasing per capita of flights it's probably not a trend.

I hate flying with passion and get extremely scared when flying through turbulences but, there was a journalist in my country, that also had experience as a pilot and said once on TV that during turbulences, is one of the safest moments in a plane. I don't remember the reasons but is there anybody in here with knowledge in the field that could confirm/deny this?

This seems like one of those topics that seems to be eliciting some response we might consider normal if it was code switched into Bay Area or NYC speak but seems to be getting a lot of pushback because it sounds like it's coming from particular airline boosters.

This isn't to say either of those things really happen just it sometimes sure seems like it.

I can't tell if it's just me or something with flights but recently when I take flights I get an intense headache that isn't similar to other headaches.

Employee of SkyPath here. We are trying to give a solution to this problem dedicated thread here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40828180

Is there anything global warming can't do?

"Are Clear Air Turbulence events happening more often?

In a word, yes. Recent studies have shown a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of CAT conditions over the past few decades. This increase is linked to several factors, most notably climate change."

We've had this invisible hand of the market to regulate ourselves. Now we have the invisible hand of the planet. It won't be a fun ride either.

Commercial pilot here. Instead of climate change, we should be talking about continuous descent profiles (CDPs) that have become more common in the past years 5-10 years. These profiles with idle engines allow for a smoother, more fuel-efficient descent by reducing the need for level-off segments. However, CDPs can increase the perception of turbulence during descent. This is because aircraft remain at higher altitudes for longer periods, where atmospheric instability and wind shear are more pronounced. This increased turbulence is not due to climate change but rather the result of these optimized descent procedures aimed at reducing fuel consumption and minimizing environmental impact.

If plane wings were hinged (allowing a wing to flop down, but not up), then even the worst turbulence couldn't cause negative G in the cabin. That would pretty much eliminate injuries.

Obviously the wings need to lock into place for landing, and many structural elements of the craft would need to be redesigned.

One day we will research a boson particle that can be fired at the air and cause an abrupt polarization allowing for planes to travel through with very little air resistance.

> [Clear Air Turbulence] is particularly common around the tropopause, the boundary layer between the troposphere and the stratosphere, at altitudes between 7,000 and 12,000 meters (23,000 to 39,000 feet) .

Oh, excellent the altitudes that 99% of aircraft fly at, unaffecting the ultra rich who fly private jets at 40,000k-50,000k+.

I wonder if this is like an immune system response by mother nature, it’s attacking the thing that’s warming it up i.e. air travel? Self correcting systems