34 passengers are still in hospital. Last week, a Singapore Airlines flight experienced extreme turbulence. A 73-year-old passenger suffered a heart attack and died. Dozens of other passengers and crew members were injured. The plane had to make an unscheduled landing in Bangkok.
Just a few days later, further incidents involving severe turbulence occurred. Twelve people were injured on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin – but fortunately not nearly as seriously as on Singapore Airlines flight SQ321.
And on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Izmir, a flight attendant was recently seriously injured. The fact that we read more often about such incidents is not only due to increased media attention. In fact, severe turbulence is increasing as a result of climate change, as various studies show.
Clear air turbulence occurs out of the blue
Most of it can be predicted, as modern aircraft are equipped with highly developed weather radar systems. “We can predict around 75 percent of turbulence up to 18 hours in advance,” explains Paul Williams, atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading, to the BBC. But the most unpleasant type, the so-called clear air turbulence, which literally appears out of the blue and is therefore unpredictable, is on the rise, according to researchers at the University of Reading.
Climate change is causing clear air turbulence to become more common, says Williams. “Put simply, climate change is increasing the temperature difference between the warm and cold air masses that meet in the upper atmosphere and form the jet stream. This effect makes the jet stream less stable and leads to more turbulence.”
Behavior of birds should provide information
So now people are looking into how to better predict this turbulence, or even predict it at all. So far, pilots have only been able to rely on the reports of aircraft flying ahead. But nature itself could provide better information about how to predict the shaking or even how to deal with it. Researchers are looking at the behavior of birds.
Although most birds do not fly as high as airplanes, some do soar extremely high. Frigate birds, for example. “Their flight is a rollercoaster ride,” Emily Shepard, an expert on bird flight and air currents at Swansea University in Wales, told the BBC.
The birds rely on thermals and wind to stay aloft for months and can fly at extreme altitudes, up to four kilometers above the ground. To reach these high altitudes, they often catch strong updrafts in mountainous cumulus clouds – such clouds cockpit crews try to avoid due to the strong turbulence.
The birds take advantage of this. “They gain altitude in these very, very turbulent cloud systems,” says Shepard. Very little is known about how the birds manage to fly in a controlled manner.
Findings could influence aircraft design
Shepard and her colleagues are researching this. They do this by accompanying the birds in small aircraft. But there is also a debate about equipping the animals with sensors to learn more about air movements and predict turbulence.
But the research is not only relevant for forecasts. The analysis of how birds use turbulence to their advantage could also be incorporated into the design of new aircraft in the future – especially in the area of vertical take-off aircraft that fly in urban areas.
The original of this article “A special species of bird could now help against treacherous turbulence” comes from aeroTelegraph.