We’ve seen many recent extreme weather events – from mudslides in Columbia to flooding in Australia – which scientists say are a consequence of climate change; but it’s not just the weather that is affected. The Earth’s atmosphere is made up of several layers of air which all flow around each other in patterns known as jet streams and an increase in temperature will cause these to speed up. This is bad news for air passengers, including the 1 million people currently airborne at this very instant, because an increase in the speed of the jet streams will cause more turbulence making flying less comfortable and potentially more dangerous. I spoke to atmospheric scientist Paul Williams…

• Climate change will cause a 59% increase in light turbulence, 94% increase in moderate turbulence, and 140%  increase in severe turbulence.
• Turbulence is measured on a scale from 1 to 7 where 1 means light turbulence, 3 means moderate, 5 means severe, and 7 means extreme.
• Light turbulence is a slight strain against the seat belt, moderate turbulence causes unsecured objects to become dislodged and makes walking around difficult, and severe turbulence results in anything that isn’t strapped down being catapulted around the cabin.
• Turbulence is caused by wind shear – the higher you go up into the atmosphere the windier it gets – and instabilities within these layers of shear generate turbulence.
• As the atmosphere is heated, the temperature increase causes the jet streams to move faster, creating more wind shear and thus more turbulence.
• The researchers hope that results such as this will encourage us to think more carefully about our carbon footprint as there are likely many effects of Climate Change that we do not know about.

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.