Is airplane turbulence really getting worse?

Is airplane turbulence more frequent—and more dangerous—today than it was 50 years ago?

A growing number of reports say there has been an increase in turbulence, particularly around clear-air turbulence—the kind that is invisible and occurring in clear skies.

Turbulence is caused by atmospheric dynamics at high altitudes, especially near jet streams around 30,000 feet, where fast-moving ribbons of air flow. The clear-air turbulence develops where these streams interact with surrounding air, creating strong wind shear that destabilizes the atmosphere. Unlike storm-driven turbulence, it forms in clear skies, making it hard to detect with current radar technology.

Clear-air turbulence is fundamentally different from the turbulence that occurs during a thunderstorm or when passing through a cloud. And it’s that hard-to-predict turbulence that, by some accounts, is worsening—along with the bumpy skies linked to more frequent storms.

Ahmed Busnaina, Northeastern University distinguished professor and the William Lincoln Smith chair, who studied the design of jet engines, says the aerospace industry is already taking the possibility of increased turbulence seriously.

“The problem is we can see something like a storm clearly,” Busnaina says. “You can see that on the regular radar. With clear-air turbulence, there is no way you can see it. The technology doesn’t exist today.”

Busnaina notes that companies like Boeing are designing so-called Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems to help spot clear-air turbulence up to 10 miles ahead of an aircraft.

Better detection would be a breakthrough for the airline industry, which relies on word-of-mouth communication between pilots and weather forecasts to avoid potentially turbulent areas, Busnaina says.

In terms of airplane engineering, newer designs are much more equipped to handle turbulence. Technologies that improve aerodynamic control, such as flexible wings and autopilot sensors that can detect changes in the surrounding airspace, have helped to make commercial aircraft more able to withstand the effects of turbulence—or navigate through turbulence more easily, according to Busnaina.

But sudden bouts of turbulence can be dangerous—even life-threatening to passengers, as was the case during a commercial flight from London to Singapore in 2024.

Between 2009 and 2021, 30 passengers and 116 crew members were seriously injured because of turbulence, according to Federal Aviation Administration data—a very small fraction of the billions of people who fly on airplanes every year.

“Right now, the best way to handle turbulence is just to avoid it,” Busnaina says. “Most technologies are not really equipped to handle it in a way that guarantees safety.”

The degree to which the increased turbulence is driven by climate change remains an open question, says Auroop Ganguly, Northeastern’s distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering, who studies the impacts of climate change.

For Ganguly, it’s a question of controlling for all the variables—and more data.

“While a few recent studies have indeed suggested that climate variability and change may impact and indeed worsen clear-air turbulence,” he says, “given the difficulty of understanding or predicting turbulence-related phenomena or even their statistics either from our current physics models or even—considering the paucity of data—from data-driven and AI models, my assessment is that these studies need to be taken as suggestive and not the final word on the topic.”

One 2023 study looking at clear-air turbulence—the type that pilots can’t detect by radar—found that “severe-or-greater” turbulent air has increased by as much as 55% compared to 1979.

“We find clear evidence of large increases around the midlatitudes at aircraft cruising altitudes,” the researchers wrote, noting that clear-air turbulence is expected to get worse.

The widely cited study notes that the increase is “consistent with the expected effects of climate change.” Additionally, studies show that warmer air caused by carbon dioxide emissions may be creating instability in the jet stream, a layer of fast-moving air that snakes through the Northern Hemisphere, generating friction in the surrounding atmosphere.

“While we must interpret the possibilities cautiously and while more studies are needed for firm conclusions, we do need to consider the plausible ranges of behavior through risk and resilience-based frameworks, especially to decide technological and financial investments, like in the design of airplanes, as one example,” Ganguly says.

Ganguly notes that there is a need for more empirical data “irrespective of the specific attribution to climate.”

“If turbulence or the impacts thereof are indeed worsening, then that may call for risk and resilience informed investments,” he says.

This story is republished courtesy of Northeastern Global News news.northeastern.edu.