It’s not just you — flights are getting more turbulent

Photo by Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto via Getty ImagesAn especially insidious form of turbulence has gotten worse because of climate change, according to new research. It’s turbulence that forms in cloudless skies that’s typically invisible to a plane’s radar, called clear-air turbulence. And it’s projected to become a bigger problem as the world warms.
Severe clear-air turbulence (CAT) has already become more common, according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last week. On a typical flight route over the North Atlantic, there was a 55 percent increase in clear air turbulence between 1979 and 2020. While the increase in turbulence was the most pronounced over the US and North Atlantic, the study also found significantly more turbulence along popular routes…

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