One passenger died of a suspected heart attack and 30 others were injured after a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore hit severe turbulence on May 21.
- Air Turbulence occurs when a plane hits air currents causing it to roll, pitch or drop suddenly. It is said to be becoming more common due to climate change.
- “Clear air” turbulence is, as the name suggests, cloudless and cannot be seen. It is much more problematic as it’s very difficult to detect.
- What makes clear-air turbulence dangerous is that it can’t be seen in advance like turbulence caused by weather, known as convective turbulence.
- Normally, flights divert or enter a holding pattern to avoid severe turbulence, but if it can’t be seen in advance, pilots can’t adjust to avoid it.
- Planes often fly through air masses known as jet streams. Within those streams, there are multiple layers of air flowing at varying speeds “almost on top of each other. The differing temperatures cause friction. That friction, in turn, causes “a lot of disturbance.
- In convective turbulence, caused by storms or other weather, air is heated and displaced, leading to high moisture content that can be easily spotted on flight instruments. Clear-air turbulence doesn’t have that high moisture content level, so radar and other instruments can’t detect it until it’s too late.
- NASA says it is developing an early-warning system that relies on ground-mounted infrasonic microphones to detect clear-air turbulence hundreds of kilometers away.
