Air Turbulence Scare Based On One Dodgy Study
By Paul Homewood
The whole of the media’s scare story that turbulence is getting worse hinges entirely on one single study, reported by Sky last year:
In other words, it is largely based on just one spot in the North Atlantic, which shows an increase of just 9.7 hours a year in severe turbulence since 1979.
And we are supposed to believe that has any statistical significance at all? That it is representative of the rest of the world?
Or that we had the same ability to measure turbulence back in 1979?
Or that aircraft were flying at the same altitude then?
In reality the Reading study by Paul Williams did not even attempt to measure turbulence events as actually recorded by pilots. Instead his findings are all based on re-analysis of CAT (clean air turbulence) diagnostics, such as temperatures and wind fields, which are in turn provided by Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models.
Any similarity with actual turbulence events is entirely coincidental!
In short, the whole scam is based on computer modelling.
It should be pointed out that Paul Williams has made a career out of studying turbulence, and to be fair has come up with some useful recommendations for the aviation industry about how to better predict turbulence.
But can we trust his research when his livelihood depends on it?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
blancolirio Aviation Utube incidents report on this incident showed the stats report on Clear Air Turbulence to be at a constant level over recent years! No increase in incidence.
Juan at blancolirio has the money shot that undermines the BBC and wider media position. It comes from page 15 of this report
https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.pdf
Any complaint about the story should refer to this report by the NTSB and in particular the chart showing no rise in turbulence incidents over several decades of records. Data trumps models.
I would suggest contacting the grammar and error crew who can be found here (well hidden, and appears to require a BBC sign in for access these days)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20039682
Back it up with a formal complaint into the complaint vacuum system if you like:I suspect there have been a large number, given the reactions of people I’ve come across since.
If CAT is ‘unpredictable, virtually invisible and hard to detect’ I wonder what the error bars would look like in any study of the effect and its increase or decrease, let alone its attribution.
Dr. Williams appears to be able to predict it – or rather to predict where it happened based on weather data. Airlines have such data. Why, therefore, are they unable to forecast when they are going to fly into turbulence, when Dr. Williams knows exactly where the turbulence was 20 years ago?
Sounds like more policy based evidence. Utterly worthless.
CAT is easier to find than Climate Change.
Air turbulence – try hitting three air pockets, one after the other just after take off from Kai Tak, Hong Kong, February 1969 on a flight path that went straight over Victoria- each pocket dropped the aircraft lower before bouncing the plane back up. Tragic as the incident was with the Singapore flight, it clearly shows why you have a seatbelt and why it should be kept on, even slack but secure is better than nothing and just because the seat belt light is off does not mean it is safe to jump around, do cart wheels or run up and down. Air turbulence happens, just as potholes in roads happen, pity that the Biased Broadcasting Corporation has suddenly discovered that it is all down to Climate Change- the next big discovery will be………..rain is wet and heavier than air.
That would be wave and rotor, coming off the mountains. Very common in mountainous regions. The Canaries are famed for such wind-shear.
R
The airstrip in the Falklands at RAF Mount Pleasant is quite frequently affected by these rotor winds, causing flight cancellations.
One of the biggest blags in the entire ‘climate change’ racket has been taking tiny data margins and extrapolating them into a ‘global crisis’.
1.5C of alleged warming apparently has the world on the edge of global collapse while a 10 hour annual variation (over a 40+ year cycle!) is apparently cause for alarm.
Credit where it’s due; this is world-class gaslighting.
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Since tropical cyclone activity has been declining for 120 years, and CAT is based upon the same jetstream activity as cyclone generation, I would very much doubt that CAT is getting worse.
See Chand et al.
Declining tropical cyclones.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01388-4.pdf
R
When I was flying the Atlantic in the 1970s cruising altitudes tended to be higher than today’s (although business jets quite often transit at 40-45,000ft now). 38-42,000ft was quite common, whereas more recently it has been rare to see altitudes above about 36,000 ft.
How actually are they measuring it and where is ALL the data back to pre industrial times that they love to reference? One data point at ONE location and this speaks for the jetstream activity for the whole planet?
I did not come across this interesting lefty before but just look at her history and her complete LACK of credentials to think critically on matters scientific…
Oh why oh why can we not have the same normal people as Sky News in Australia?
She is a lefty hack,
Previous work in The Guardian, Evening Standard, Camden New Journal, DeSmog UK.
That list just about sums up an “ideal” lefty if there is such a thing
(8) Victoria Seabrook | LinkedIn
She only “suddenly” became a Klymutt expert in 2021 and claims awards ( My skin doth so crawl when I see anyone promoting themselves as an award winner.
She only lists one item under education and that is a Masters in investigative journalism…..hmmm I do not see a lot of “investigation” here…. more paroting received wisdom!
So in conclusion she is as clueless and ill educated to spout on this subject as her BBC counterpart, the equally clueless and hapless Georgina Rannard.
This is the ideal case for a “Fear Campaign” as described by Booker and North. The model cannot be interrogated, the turbulence cannot be measured and disaster is potentially massive. Fills all the BBC’s criteria for headlines too. They could also be called Snake oil salesmen!
“Politically motivated liars” suits me fine
As more and more wind and solar farms are placed around airports, there might be changes that are not anticipated.
“In a typical spot in the North Atlantic – one of the world’s busiest routes – the total annual duration of severe turbulence increased by 55% from 17.7 hours in 1979 to 27.4 hours in 2020.”
So that’s 55% in 41 years, or 1.34% per year on a linear scale.
But Clear Air Turbulence is, we are told, very difficult to detect until it is encountered. So it must be assumed that the data comes from the reports of Pilots.
According to the FAA, the number of annual operations (flights) in the North Atlantic increased from 547,907 in 2012 to 723,356 in 2017, an increase of 6.4% per annum on a linear scale.
So, with the number of observers increasing at nearly 5 times the rate of observed turbulence, It may be assumed that ‘Climate Change’ is having a beneficial effect by reducing Clear Air Turbulence.
(yes, I know that my logic and assumptions are wild but are they any more wild than those of the IPCC?)
LATs bit on this stated “severe clear-air turbulence in the North Atlantic has increased by 55% since 1979,”
Well, globally commercial air travel increased some 47% from 2009 to 2019.
I noted that this morning the Mail was full of EXCLUSIVE turbulence linked to climate change stories (I think there were 3 of them). This afternoon they had all disappeared: I guess the comments must have sunk them faster than Rishi Sunak in a cross Channel RIB.
She’s got this about face hasn’t she? Aircraft cause turbulence as there was no reported turbulence for billions of years until these things started buzzing around.
I wonder if anyone has looked for an increase in reports of ‘air-pockets’ following a solar storm or a Coronal Mass Ejection etc? There was a big Solar Storm a couple of days before this sudden descent event. Does the incoming electrical energy stir up atmospheric convection currents?
Ms Seabrook claims that it didn’t give the crew a chance to advise passengers to buckle up.
Airlines routinely advise passengers to use the seat belt during flight for this very reason. The pilot choses to makes it mandatory as and when he feels that is necessary using the seat belt illuminated sign.
It is the cabin crew who are most at risk of such incidents especially if they are doing a drinksfood service.
All other aircraft tracks on that day showed a massive amount of weather avoidance of the area Singair flew through. This is NOT a CAT event but a Cb penetration event. Something no pilot should ever do. ALL Cbs come with a warning of severe turbulence. Turbulence which can cause a hull loss. The altitude trace for this event is firstly a climb and then a return to 37000 feet. Not a 6000ft dive. The near-hull loss and all the damage/injuries were caused by a violent reversal of rate climb into a rate of descent, followed by another violent reversal into a climb. Exactly the profile that would be followed by an aircraft penetrating a Cb cell. The 6000ft descent nonsense was a face-saving story to cover Singair’s co@kup in light of the death and injuries.
I have operated big jets in and around that area for 23+ years. At times I have been 200nm plus off track to avoid these things. I would never have penetrated one.
More comedy stuff:
Storer et al. (2017) analyzed a CMIP5 simulation using the RCP8.5 scenario in 2050–2080 and compared it with a pre-industrial control simulation, covering the whole globe and each season at different flight levels. Within the jet stream regions of both hemispheres, the RCP8.5 scenario relative to the pre-industrial control showed around a 300% increase in CAT.
Well, if you believe that satellite measurements in 1979 at 188 and 206hPa were as good as those in 2020 you have a LOT of faith. Moreover, I seriously doubt whether the data was really recorded at that sort of resolution, although some reanalysis maths might persuade you that you were looking at reality rather than a model. In any event, the study looks at FL39, whereas I have already remarked that modern aircraft tend to fly several thousand feet lower, while the business jets zoom overhead at up to FL45 – possibly comfortably into the tropopause in most circumstances except severe thunderstorms at lower latitiudes.