{"id":41093,"date":"2024-05-31T07:23:35","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T01:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=41093"},"modified":"2025-10-13T14:31:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T09:01:37","slug":"impact-of-climate-change-on-flight-turbulence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/impact-of-climate-change-on-flight-turbulence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Link Between Climate Change and Rising Incidents of Severe Turbulence in Aircraft"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Why in News?<\/li>\n<li>What is Flight-Turbulence, its Types and Causes?<\/li>\n<li>Impact of Climate Change on Flight-Turbulence<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why in News?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>After a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore was hit by sudden and severe turbulence over Myanmar, a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin encountered severe turbulence over Turkey.<\/li>\n<li>Though flights around the world experience varying degrees of turbulence on a daily basis, the recent incidents that result in serious injuries are rarer, pointing towards the impact of explosive growth in air traffic and climate change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is Flight-Turbulence, its Causes and Types?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Meaning of flight-turbulence:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Turbulence is <strong>an irregular motion of the air<\/strong> resulting from eddies and vertical currents.<\/li>\n<li>It may be as insignificant as minor bumps or severe enough to throw an airplane out of control or to cause structural damage.<\/li>\n<li>Turbulence is associated with <strong>fronts, wind shear, thunderstorms, etc<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Effects of flight-turbulence:<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Types of flight-turbulence:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Light turbulence<\/strong> momentarily causes slight changes in altitude resulting in slight bumpiness.<\/li>\n<li><strong>During moderate turbulence<\/strong>, aircraft may experience more notable changes in altitude and attitude, but the plane remains well under control.<\/li>\n<li><strong>In severe turbulence<\/strong>, there are significant and sudden changes of altitude and attitude, and the aircraft could momentarily go out of control.<\/li>\n<li><strong>In extreme turbulence<\/strong>, the plane is violently tossed about and is practically impossible to control.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Causes of flight-turbulence:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mechanical turbulence<\/strong>: It is the result of friction between the air and the ground &#8211; irregular terrain and man-made obstacles &#8211; that leads to formation of eddies.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Convective or thermal turbulence:<\/strong> It is caused when hot air from certain ground surfaces rises rapidly while cooler air descends, resulting in convective air currents. <strong>Frontal turbulence: <\/strong>It is caused by the friction between two opposing air masses and the lifting of warm air by the sloping frontal surface and is most common close to <strong>thunderstorms<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Wind shear:<\/strong> It is the change in wind direction\/ wind speed (in temperature inversion areas, around jet streams, etc) over a specific horizontal or vertical distance.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Clear air turbulence (CAT)<\/strong>, which can be sudden and severe and is extremely difficult to forecast or see, may be considered as a type of wind shear turbulence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Impact of Climate Change on Flight-Turbulence:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Findings of the study:<\/strong> According to some studies, climate change could make turbulence more frequent and severe.<\/li>\n<li><strong>How can this be claimed?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Climate change is <strong>strengthening the jet streams<\/strong> that cause turbulence.<\/li>\n<li>A large increase in CAT between 1979 and 2020 in the mid and aircraft cruising altitudes.<\/li>\n<li>Over the North Atlantic, severe\/ greater CAT durations increased by more than 55% over this period.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Future predictions:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The frequency of severe turbulence would increase more than that of light or moderate turbulence.<\/li>\n<li>Not only CAT, <strong>but also mountain wave turbulence and near-cloud turbulence<\/strong> will intensify due to climate change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q.1. What is the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)?<\/h3>\n<p>The ICAO is a United Nations agency which helps 193 countries to cooperate together and share their skies to their mutual benefit.<\/p>\n<h3>Q.2. What is the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)?<\/h3>\n<p>The DGCA is a statutory body [under the Aircraft (Amendment) Act, 2020] of the Government of India to regulate civil aviation in India. It investigates aviation accidents and incidents, maintains all regulations related to aviation, etc.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/international\/qatar-airways-flight-suffers-turbulence-many-injured\/article68218771.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Qatar Airways flight suffers turbulence, at least 12 injured<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/is-climate-change-behind-more-frequent-and-severe-turbulence-faced-by-aircraft-9362734\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though flights around the world experience varying degrees of turbulence on a daily basis, the recent incidents point towards the impact of climate change<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":41094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-41093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}