I think we can all agree that “turbulence” has very much been the vibe of 2023, both in the air and on the ground. We’ve even got the receipts to back it up thanks to a measurement known as Eddy Dissipation Rate or its acronym EDR.
According to Turbli, a website designed to track flight turbulence, the top 10 most bumpy flights in the Oceania region contain a bunch departing from, and arriving in Australia during 2022.
To help qualify these confusing digits, The Age spoke to Professor Todd Lane from The University of Melbourne’s Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department.
“What an aircraft is experiencing when it’s bumping around is actually small variations in the wind that cause the aircraft to go up and down,” he told the publication.
“It’s not changes in the horizontal wind, but upward and downwards wind that push the aircraft up and down and make a bump”.
“The Eddy Dissipation Rate is measuring the energy of those small variations in the wind.”
AHHHH.
I get it now (lies).
Experts are also now saying to expect more turbulence in general due to climate change. Great news! Just grand!
“Warmer air from CO2 emissions is increasing windshear in the jet streams, strengthening clear-air turbulence,” said a study from the University of Reading in the UK.
The study’s co-author, Professor Paul Williams, said one of the ways to navigate out of this increase is to invest in turbulence detection and forecasting systems, “to prevent the rougher air from translating into bumpier flights in the coming decades”.
But what do we do in the meantime? I mean, earlier this month a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu to Sydney got so shaky that passengers literally “hit the roof” of the plane. Pure nightmare fuel.
Will I perpetually have the “It’s going to be a bumpy ride” quote from Harry Potter in my head every time I board a commercial plane?
“Nobody should stop flying because they’re afraid of turbulence, but it is sensible to keep your seat belt fastened all the time, unless you’re moving around, which is what the pilots do,” Williams said, per the BBC.
“That is almost a guarantee that you will be safe even in the worst turbulence.”
Solid advice.
Remember back in February when seven people were injured on a QantasLink flight from Brisbane to Hervey Bay?
Yeah, let’s not do a repeat of that, please.
