It's getting hot. That's bad news for airplanes, especially the smaller ones

Researchers have found that climate change is bad for planes. In a new study, they explained that there is a "heightened climate risk to airlines from thunderstorm microbursts, especially during takeoff and landing." Writing for The Conversation, the scientists revealed that climate change is making turbulence worse. Professor Lance M Leslie and Milton Speer from the University of Technology, Sydney, have established that there is a link between "freak wind gusts" and global warming. Using machine learning techniques, the two researchers noted that heat and moisture are the primary reasons for the creation of "downbursts", the winds that trigger turbulence. Their study has been published in the journal Climate.

These can cause a scare for the planes while they are taking off and landing, leading them to lose or gain altitude. They warned that "airlines and air safety authorities should anticipate more strong microbursts" and remain more vigilant in a warming world. Turbulence has often been studied by scientists, but they have mostly focused on the "dangers at high altitude, such as clear air turbulence, and jet stream instability."

Also Read: Drunk passenger pulls woman's hair, is zip tied after maniacal episode on flight in New York

Leslie and Speer say that there has been "less research on the dangers of turbulence caused by downbursts at lower altitudes." They turned to machine learning to identify the climate drivers behind these downbursts and discovered that heat and moisture work together to create these downbursts that are dangerous for planes.

"Global warming increases the amount of water vapour in the lower atmosphere. That's because 1°C of warming allows the atmosphere to hold 7% more water vapour," they wrote. As the seas get warmer, extra moisture from the surface of the oceans evaporates and feeds the clouds. "Increased heat and water vapour fuels stronger thunderstorms," they wrote.

Thunderstorms pose a major hazard, causing "rapid changes in wind strength and direction at low altitudes," according to the experts. Even small downbursts, only about a few kilometres wide, can abruptly change the direction and speed of wind, triggering turbulence in the air. The problem worsens for smaller aircraft. "Small planes with 4–50 passenger seats are more vulnerable to the strong, even extreme, wind gusts spawned by thunderstorm microbursts," the authors wrote. It is only going to get bad from here, as the "intensity of destructive wind gusts from wet microburst thunderstorms is expected to increase."