Our turbulent skies

Injuries and a death on a recent Singapore Airlines flight have highlighted issues with severe turbulence Buckle your seat belts - those bumpy rides are becoming more frequent, thanks to climate changeDriving at 500 kilometres an hour along a severely bumpy road - that's what it's like to steer a plane that's going through the worst turbulence - and that's exactly what pilots are trying to avoid."It does create a bit of nervousness amongst the minds of passengers," Massey University school of aviation chief executive officer Ashok Poduval tells The Detail. "There are two turbulence incidents which have happened in quick succession - the fact of the matter is, it's really pretty much coincidental. "If you look at a FAA report, in 10 years from 2012 to 2022, only 34 passengers were seriously injured in 163 turbulence instances, so it's very low. It's over 25 years since a passenger has been killed in commercial aircraft turbulence - that was in 1997."That was until May 22 this year, when a passenger died of a suspected heart attack and 30 people were injured after a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER hit turbulence. "We experience wind gusts every day and that's turbulence," NIWA meteorologist Richard Turner tells The Detail. "Higher up, generally the flow is quite steady. If you've flown on an aircraft, the take off can often be quite bumpy, you get above and things tend to smooth out. There can be instances though, particularly if you're flying over mountain ranges or something, there can be large undulations in the airflow... sometimes turbulence can be generated around that or generated by thunderstorms where you get rapidly rising columns of air."Turbulence is very common - but the severe and extreme events are not."What we see a lot of the time is either light or moderate," Poduval says."Mostly, pilots will be avoiding severe turbulence if they know it's out there, unless you have issues like clear air turbulence."And that can be difficult to anticipate."Jet streams are really the cause of clear air turbulence," Poduval says. "Basically, these are tunnels at higher altitudes. They are tubular currents of air that travel at a high speed. …Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details