Singapore Airlines Flight: Experts Say Deaths Are Rare Even As Climate Change May Cause Extreme Turbulence

(Photo : Getty Images/ROSLAN RAHMAN)

Experts say that airplane turbulence, which killed a passenger on a Singapore Airlines aircraft on Tuesday, is a complicated phenomenon that is becoming more frequent as a result of climate change.

Clear Air Turbulence

The Singapore Airlines flight had experienced "severe turbulence," resulting in one passenger's death and thirty injuries. However, experts caution that deaths are uncommon, even as they warn that climate change may be contributing to increasingly severe turbulence.

At least seven people suffered significant injuries, and a 73-year-old passenger with medical issues passed away-possibly from cardiac arrest, according to Kittipong Kittikachorn, general manager of Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport.

The reason for the turbulence is being looked into. About ten hours after takeoff, Singapore Airlines reported that a strong turbulence had occurred on the aircraft from London to Singapore.

Experts refer to what airline pilots encounter as "clear air turbulence," or "CAT," as the "invisible danger of the skies." Radar technologies are utterly unable to identify this extremely rare but extremely deadly occurrence.

The high troposphere, where it meets the tropopause at an altitude of around 7,000-12,000 meters (23,000-39,000 feet), is the atmospheric zone most vulnerable to CAT. Here, jet stream zones are where CAT is most commonly found. It could also happen close to mountain ranges at lower elevations.

Because of this, CAT is regarded as one of the worst instances of air turbulence. According to a University of Reading study, the primary cause of the 55% rise of CATs across the North Atlantic since 1976 is climate change.

According to scientists, the climate crisis is causing temperatures to rise, which is significantly increasing turbulence during transatlantic flights.

The warm troposphere and the chilly stratosphere that surround the jet stream cause increasing temperature differentials, which in turn cause an increase in wind shear. The lower stratosphere, where airplanes travel to avoid atmospheric drag, is experiencing an opposite trend to the troposphere, where temperature differentials are reducing due to climate change.

"An increase in carbon dioxide cools the stratosphere, and it does it in such a way that it increases vertical shear, and cruising altitude tends to be in the stratosphere," said Ramalingam Saravanan, professor and department head of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.

Rare Deaths

While turbulence-related deaths are rare, serious collisions are not unheard of, according to Larry Cornman, a U.S. government project scientist and physicist. National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Science Foundation.

"Often, for something like this, it's just the wrong place at the wrong time," said Cornman, who studies small-scale motions of the atmosphere that could endanger aircraft.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, there haven't been any turbulence-related deaths in the United States since 2009 on big commercial aircraft like the Boeing that ran into unexpectedly severe turbulence at 37,000 feet above the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar.

Out of millions upon millions of flights, turbulence has resulted in 185 serious injuries between 2009 and 2023-the most recent year for which data is available to the public.

The agency, which mandates that airlines disclose injuries and fatalities, classifies an injury as significant if it necessitates hospitalization for more than two days, affects any internal organ, or causes bone fractures, second- or third-degree burns, major hemorrhages, or damage to nerves, muscles, or tendons.

Between 2009 and 2022, there were at least 129 crew members and 34 passengers wounded in incidents that were documented.

According to Cornman, heart attacks or head injuries from falling luggage or hitting the ceiling might result in turbulence-related deaths.