Singapore Airlines tragedy: What is air turbulence? Is it related to climate change? Incident deconstructed
Singapore International Airlines flight from London's Heathrow Airport to Changi International Airport in Singapore developed mid-air turbulence resulting in a steep fall. The plane was flying over the Irrawaddy basin in Myanmar when this incident took place resulting in the death of a British citizen and injuring scores of others.
This incident has prompted many questions regarding air turbulences, their nature and their increasing frequency.
What causes air turbulence?
The mid-air turbulence takes place for different reasons. Some of these reasons are:
Mountain wave turbulence: These are strong winds that are perpendicular and flow towards the mountain tops. When these winds rise, a flight flying on its path experiences turbulences. When a flight path is over a mountain, the flights generally experience turbulences due to this reason.
Also Read: Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 flight from London to Singapore faces severe turbulence, drops 7000 feet; watch video
Convective turbulences: When warm air rises over a surface, it leads to atmospheric instability in some cases. Flights on such occasions experience turbulence.
Clear Air Turbulence: This is generally difficult to predict and the most likely to affect the flights due to turbulence. It is caused by several factors.
Climate change
While no clear data indicates the correlation between climate change factors and increased turbulence, it has been established by experts that climate change has
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