Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
An article on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website makes the claim that clear air turbulence (CAT) is getting worse, affecting airline flights, and the culprit is climate change. This claim is demonstrably false. Data from actual airline flights shows no increase in turbulence.
The BBC article, “Flight turbulence increasing as planet heats up – study,” by reporter Maddie Molloy says:
Scientists at Reading University in the UK studied clear-air turbulence, which is harder for pilots to avoid.
They found that severe turbulence had increased 55% between 1979 and 2020 on a typically busy North Atlantic route.
They put the increase down to changes in wind speed at high altitudes due to warmer air from carbon emissions.
“Following a decade of research showing that climate change will increase clear-air turbulence in the future, we now have evidence suggesting that the increase has already begun,” said Prof Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading who co-authored the study.
The claims are based on a study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, titled Evidence for Large Increases in Clear-Air Turbulence Over the Past Four Decades.
But, there’s a problem – the study failed to examine any actual airline turbulence event data to determine whether CAT incidents have increased – instead, they relied on data reanalysis and modeling of the atmosphere to make their claim.
Actual flight data presented in previous Climate Realism posts, here, here, and here, for example, refutes computer model simulations, which suggest flying conditions are worsening due to turbulence.
The scientists cited by the BBC completely ignored a 2021 report by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which plotted accident data related to turbulence, finding no statistically significant increase since 1989, despite a tremendous increase in passengers and miles flown. See Figure 1 below:
If CAT had increased due to climate change as the study claims, there would be a clear upward trend demonstrated in the graph. Instead, the values of turbulence related aircraft accidents have held steady since about 1995 as seen in Figure 1.
The ICAO accident graph agrees with what was found in Climate at a Glance: Deaths from Extreme Weather. From that publication comes these facts:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report, Chapter 11, Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate, concludes that changes in the frequency and intensity of most severe weather events have not been detected nor can they be attributed to human caused climate change.
Real world data shows that there has been no increase in drought, or heatwaves; no increase in flooding; no increase in tropical cyclones and hurricanes; no increase in winter storms; and no increase in thunderstorms or tornadoes, or associated hail, lightning, and extreme winds from thunderstorms.
The point here is that CAT occurs from changes in the jet stream and weather fronts, short term events which the IPCC says it is unable to attribute any changes to as a result of human-caused climate change.
Even if CAT was increasing, new technology is being introduced to spot it and avoid it. For example, Boeing, the world’s leading commercial aircraft manufacturer, has been doing tests with a laser based radar (LIDAR) on passenger aircraft. The system, seen in Figure 2, was developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and has a good lead time for detection of CAT:
JAXA had successfully developed the onboard system that weighs only 83.7 kilogram, which is equivalent to a passenger with one baggage, but boosts the world’s longest range of 17.5 kilometers in detecting clear-air turbulence ahead of the aircraft. A 17.5 kilometer means roughly seventy seconds for cruising aircraft, during which pilots can turn on the seatbelt sign to make advanced warning for passengers and crews to prepare for hazardous shaking. The system can potentially reduce turbulence-caused injuries by sixty percent.
The bottom line is data from the ICAO, the authority on global civil aviation, refutes claims that climate change is producing more flight turbulence. In addition, the IPCC has not indicated atmospheric turbulence is increasing. Also, even if turbulence was increasing, new LIDAR technology will help keep airline travelers safer.
Increasing flight turbulence is a non-existent problem outside of computer models. Unfortunately, model projections supporting claims of a climate crisis seem to be the only thing the BBC cares to report on when the question is climate change. As shown in similar BBC stories, Should we give up flying for the sake of the climate? and What would a flying-free world look like?, the BBC’s writers seem to feel that seeking out data or evidence falls outside their role as journalists. The evidence suggests that this is just one more in a growing line of BBC climate scare stories attempting to scold or scare people into not flying.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
I have no doubt that the BBC’s all-new and world-leading, fact-checking investigations unit Verify – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65650822 – will corroborate the absolute truth of this story.
I think the statement at the beginning of the BBC news the other day was somewhat chilling….
Words to the effect “welcome to BBC news and BBC Verify – we go through the issues so you can be sure you are hearing the facts”
Q. Why would the self declared worlds best news service have to tell us they are telling the truth?
For the exact same reason that, until recently, most stories had a BBC link to themselves so as to tell us why we could ‘Trust the BBC‘
That’s what Verify is: a re-hash of the ‘Trust Unit’ but actually expanded upon.
It is like sacerdotal celibacy in the medieval church. You can tell to what extent it was observed by the number of campaigns devoted to restoring or reinforcing it. All they will do with Verify is make sure that what they broadcast conforms to the BBC internal prejudices and give them an excuse for excluding any contrary point of view.
From the beginning so called “fact checkers” were a ploy that the “news” media decided they needed because their own credibility was suffering.
NPR says that they are “Fact Based Journalism”.
Pilots are constantly on the lookout for air pockets. We always tried to avoid them.
How do you detect them? If you know of one, how do you avoid it? Just curious as I know zero about this topic.
Not a pilot, but I suspect that air pockets are more common around the end of the month.
Mine certainly are and I don’t fly.
Strangely, my air pockets are very predictable – and increasing in size until just before payday, then – poof – clear skies.
The BBC has a new format which involves our Marianna sitting in on programmes as the ‘fact-checker’
Real science?
Realpolitik
Hey look on the bright side. At least they didn’t claim their imaginary issue was caused by Brexit!
“”Mark Carney blames rising U.K. interest rates on Brexit in an I-told-you-so interview””
https://financialpost.com/news/mark-carney-blames-brexit
Remainers are still at it
That they are despite all the evidence: Mark Carney really should talk to the City once in a while, it might open his eyes. Despite all the pre-Brexit scare stories, the financial services in the City and around London have grown because of Brexit. Not only have the financial services not moved wholesale to Frankfurt or Bonn, as feared, but international companies are increasingly seeing London as the gateway to Europe and Asia, bringing in far more money now than before Brexit.
Mervyn King was much more on the money when he said about QE causing the current inflation “It was predicted. And it happened.”
Isn’t so-called “global warming” due to Brexit?
If you believe the BBC, Brexit was delivered by climate denial. They really do think they know better than everybody else.
Story Tip
The latest UK insanity is in this story in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/16/campaigners-win-right-challenge-england-food-strategy-climate-crisis
We have not only got the Just Stop Oil nutcases, Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain etc, we have the wind and solar lobby trying to move the country to intermittent electricity supply despite all the evidence that this will not work and will anyway not reduce emissions or do anything about the climate. We have the EV legislation which will ban ICE car sales after 2030 (and reduce them before then). We have the insanity of the Climate Change Committee pontificating about all kinds of mad proposals ‘because climate’. And now we also have militant vegans trying to use the Climate Change Act to force the government to move the country to mandatory veganism!
Carina Millstone, Feedback’s chief executive (what an appropriate name!), said she was thrilled at the outcome of the appeal. ….
You see, she really thinks that people in Britain eating meat and dairy are “continuing to hurl us all towards climate catastrophe”.
Insane.
Same old sad vegans trying to impose their life choices on a big majority of people
“”despite all the evidence””
Never because of it
Why do vegans always get so agitated about everything if plant food doesn’t lead to inflammation like meat does?
“reductions in meat and dairy are a non-negotiable”
when somebody says THEIR ideas are non-negotiable, keep your powder dry!
It’s sad that these idiots think that it’s the governments job to cut foods that they don’t agree with. If the courts had an ounce of common sense they’d have thrown this out as being beyond their remit. Instead the courts are getting in on the act, pushing their way into areas that they have little or no business being in and eagerly joining the activism.
The idiot, pandering governments made it the courts’ remit by enshiring into law the ‘climate emergency’ and therefore they have to treat it as something that exists and you can’t question it with mere logic and common sense or just the facts.
Just like transgender ideology – based on faked and biased research – enshrined in law regardless of how crazy it is.
They won’t stop me having meat & dairy, absolutely guaranteed
The same bloke/BBC have been pushing the same story for a decade, he predicted it with his models so he HAS to find it!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-22073834
As always with the Beeb, their reporting is shaky at best. But no more shaky than in recent years.
I see what you did there, Joe. But I kind of enjoy a little turbulence. I don’t see where it’s a problem in the first place.
Obviously you get Shook man! By David Shukman, former Chief Science correspondent at the BBC and now hanging out at the Grantham Institute.
It seems that every major newspaper and news outlet employs an ‘environment correspondent’ just waiting to latch onto the latest ‘Climate Crisis’ meme and then run their own shock horror story. This one has certainly been doing the rounds, including in The Times.
It also seems that Reading is trying to outdo Potsdam for ill founded alarmist tripe.
irrespective of whether CAT is increasing or not, the fallacy is in the attribution that change to anthropogenic climate change.
The warmunist yahoos do not dare posit a theory of a physical mechanism by which infinitessimally slight warming over decades would cause greater CAT … because there is no such thing. They are merely throwing feces at the wall hoping some of it will stick.
Their argument has no basis therefore to model anything. A model is merely a mathematical representation of a defined physical process, so no process, no model.
Besides, even the warmunists (as well as all those in aviation) know that global warming only takes place in the lower atmosphere (ie the troposphere – whose upper limit is well below the typical cruising altitude of most passenger jet transports). CAT is only an occasional phenomenon of high altitude cruising flight, typically in the mid thirties thousand feet above sea level. CAT occurs where high level air masses of differing temperatures, pressures, or wind directions and velocities collide (ie, a “weather” phenomenon, not a climate matter).
In the stratosphere, the atmosphere is usually very stable unless flying through or near thunderstorm cells that may reach up to 70s thousands feet altitude, or passing through an air mass frontal boundary. Of course thunderstorms are not “clear air”. But when air masses collide up high (more usual for cold fronts overtaking warmer air masses), then that introduces instability along the boundary between the air masses. So if anything, a warmer atmosphere would feature fewer and less severe cold fronts meeting warmer air, and thus less CAT.
“they relied on data reanalysis and modeling”
but of course!
Good post Anthony. I have two points to add:
1) the warning time of the LIDAR system reaching 17.5 km forward, the range could be 52 seconds to 79 seconds of warning based on actual ground speed of airliners up at cruising altitude, say from FL300 to FL450 (you can easily encounter head or tailwinds of 80 kt or greater on top of ~485 kt ground speed). Also 50 seconds may not be enough to climb or descend to avoid these jet stream interfaces, but at least a warning for all passengers and crew to get strapped in can occur. (clear air turb is from slamming into a jet stream, but other turb is related to thunderstorms which weather radar can see out 40-80 miles so you can divert around them)
2) from a strictly logic based point of view, and being a pilot, turbulence arises from delta T in the atmosphere. And so called global warming decreases the delta T between the equator and poles, as the equatorial region remains the same but the polar regions warm so lower delta T, which means less storminess and lower average winds and jet stream velocities.
Finally even without the new LIDAR system in aircraft, modern weather forecasting for airline flights include extensive and highly detailed upper wind and turbulence maps so a flight crew can plan a route to avoid potential turbulence. (so even if the climate cult narrative about more turbulence were true, our increasing ability to sense weather attributes with finer resolution everywhere, means we can easily avoid any increase if that were true)
https://www.aviationweather.gov/turbulence
above is one free example, but there are even more detailed and global ones with paid services.
Clear air turbulence arises from any significant step change in temperature, air pressure, wind direction and wind speed through which the aircraft is flying. Such as by flying through a cold front, or a boundary between a strong low pressure air mass and a high pressure air mass.
You are correct that pilots review published weather reports, weather forecasts including winds aloft forecasts, plus reports from pilots (PIREPS) to air traffic control, and pilots attempt when practical to avoid expected areas of high CAT. But as all pilots know, weather forecasts are all too often inaccurate. So having an on board CAT sensor can still be useful for at least warning passengers and crew to prepare for a bit of rough air.
My point is all of the secondary or tertiary effects you mention arise solely from a delta T as the primary cause of all of those downstream effects as follows:
1) a delta T causes a delta P
2) delta P causes wind
3) large and small regions of differing P interact causing fronts and storms etc
4) these H and L pressure regions are steered by the upper winds and jet streams, which have as their primary source the delta T in item 1) above.
5) item 2) and all subsequent items are moderated and influenced by the corriolis effect too
No, fronts and pressure systems do not extend up to flight levels (between 30,000 and 45,000 feet MSL) Some thunderstorm tops do get up this high, but in fact ALL aircraft use pressure altimeters as a primary flight instrument. And ALL airspaces worldwide switch to a standard [altimeter setting*] pressure above 18,000 feet MSL – precisely because ground level pressure systems do not extend up this high. That is 29.92 in Hg or 1013 mb or hectopascal. (some areas of Europe switch to standard at 6,000 feet, which to my mind is bizarre but is the case nonetheless) (*an altimeter setting is the pressure setting that will produce 0 altitude reading at actual Mean Sea Level)
There are only two kinds of turbulence at cruising flight levels of jet airliners: Thunderstorm or convective activity; and traversing different jet stream or upper level wind zones of differing heading or speeds. It does not matter if the thunderstorm was created by a cold front at northerly latitudes, or by the inter tropical convergence zone nearer to the equator. On the other hand the upper winds are wild and varying, some are actual narrow jet streams and others are wide and can still be quite high speeds. You can have two wind “rivers” high in the air at different altitudes with different headings (unrelated to fronts or pressure systems), and in between are mixing and even waves. Transiting from one wind field to another can cause a momentary bump, but flying in this turbulent mixing zone between two wind rivers can be prolonged bumpiness, which is why the weather maps/upper wind forecasts supplemented by pireps are used.
OK there is a 3rd source of turbulence at cruising flight levels but it’s minor and avoidable – wake turbulence from other aircraft. The vorticies at the wingtips can be quite severe, like a force 0 tornado horizontally. These expand and descend out to several to ten miles after a plane passes a point in space. Vertical separation is at 1,000 foot intervals, and east vs west are at odd vs even altitudes. So if a plane going opposite to yours and 1,000 feet above you passes – you can fly through that plane’s wake. But that is avoidable as all planes have a TCAS system where each monitors all other transponders and you can see other planes out 60-80 miles out….
Actually aviation weather forecasting is at least an order of magnitude more accurate and reliable than general forecasting. That is because aviation forecasting is never more than a few hours into the future. And paid subscription services actual airline pilots use, give real time updates of these VERY accurate forecasts, which are based on satellites, weather stations, balloons, and pilot reports [pireps].
When I got my private pilot’s license back in the mid 1970’s I was shocked and amazed at how incredibly accurate (and detailed) the aviation weather forecast was, compared to generic public forecasts. But they are very short term, most only valid for an hour or perhaps several hours for high altitude forecasts. (those were the days when you had to physically go to the staffed weather office at the airport and look at the charts and interpret them yourself and read his brief or even speak to the weatherperson too – nowadays it can all be done from your Ipad with actual doppler radar and so on with things like ForeFlight) (there are even better ones for airline pilots not available to the general public)
https://foreflight.com/solutions/personal/
But yes an onboard CAT sensor would be useful. However, alas it takes a decade for any new tech to filter through FAA approval processes….
Caveat – my focus here was on cruise level stuff. I will concede that fronts, cloud cover, etc are factors for turbulence in the climb and descent phases of flights, but generally these are only perhaps 10-20% of the flight time on average. Most of that turbulence is known and you are commanded to be seated and belted during those phases of flight. Clear Air Turbulence is generally only at cruising flight levels though and my diatribe above applies to that.
Can you add, as well, answers to is turbulence more likely in warm weather versus cold?
The premise is that CO2 emissions would warm the air and that would lead to more turbulence.
If so, then we should be able to test that by comparing the turbulence reported in warm areas vs cold, while accounting for the lengths of flights.
Also, flights seem to be about 10000 ft higher – as kid I heard of jets regularly flying at about 30,000ft but now flights above 40000 are common, so is turbulence less likely in the thin air or for some reason more likely?
Is the fact that there are more flights play into the possibility of more turbulence? Due to flying through the wake of previous flights.
Any real facts you can add based on your experience would great add the discussion, to counteract the stupidity of models based on poor understanding.
You do know that most, if not all, of those questions have a lot of information available on the internet? Perhaps that should be your first stop?
When I was a kid, they were still flying propeller commercial aircraft on many routes and when my father flew one, he talked about air pockets and the need to keep your seat belt fastened.
Today we call it CAT which is a little more general term. It used to be that up drafts and down drafts where the cause however we have added large jets. Air traffic control does what it can by spacie following large jets and by routing smaller jets away from large jets but nothing is perfect. This is why they still tell you to keep your seat belt fasten even when the light is off. Unfortunately our privileged class thinks that the rules don’t apply to them and as soon as they can, the belt comes off. In my case, I loosen the belt so it’s comfortable and try to avoid bathroom breaks. If I want to use something heavy like a laptop, I keep my hands on it so it doesn’t go flying. Maybe we need to bungee cord our laptops to the table.
I think we just hear more about it because with cheap flights, many more people are flying. On line flight tracking shows a massive number of planes in the air at any given time. The more flights in the air, the more likely somebody will encounter CAT.
Sticky shoes ala Aries 1B Lunar Shuttle Stewardess in 2001 would also help a lot.
It helps that, given the vast expanse of sky they could fly in, they are all herded into narrow flight corridors like air motorways.
I don’t watch MSM news, so are unaffected by their amateur journalism and propaganda, but thank you for the latest drivel from them
BBC refuses to answer to the charge that their “fact checkers” are spreading misinformation!
Airline flights in 2013-32 million.
Reported accidents due to turbulence in 2013? FIVE!!!! OMG FIVE!!!!
I am starting to get the idea that the people who are saying and reporting all this stuff, are not particularly trustworthy.
I the ICAO graph, I love the way turbulence accidents responded to the very powerful 1997 El Nino by falling for the next 5 years.
BBC flatulence, not turbulence