ATHENS, Ga. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Commercial airplanes run into severe turbulence 5,000 times a year. Most of it happens above 10,000 feet, and the injury claims alone track into the tens of millions of dollars. To help solve the problem, scientists have developed a new way to predict air turbulence and help pilots avoid it.
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As a successful songwriter and producer, traveling is a big part of Johnny Andrews' life. The trouble is he hates to fly.
"I think flying is a necessary evil, but definitely anxiety is the operative word when I think about flying," Andrews told Ivanhoe
He's not alone. Sixty million Americans experience some fear of flying. One big trigger? Clear air turbulence, those sudden high-altitude bumps and jolts that can make even frequent fliers nervous
"It's one of those things where when it starts to happen, you have a heart race thing, sweaty palms, not a good feeling," Andrews said.
Clear air turbulence occurs when invisible ripples called gravity waves spontaneously form in the atmosphere. They're a lot like waves in the ocean.
"Imagine a plane flying through the froth of a breaking ocean wave," John Knox, Ph.D., an atmospheric dynamicist at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., told Ivanhoe. "That looks turbulent on the beach, and it's turbulent in the atmosphere as well."
Dr. Knox has developed a new mathematical model that goes beyond any method currently available. It predicts where these gravity waves will occur and how long these waves will ripple in the atmosphere.
"For pilots, our research means that they should be getting, in the near future, better information on how to avoid clear air turbulence," Dr. Knox said. "For passengers, it means fewer scary rides."
It may not completely eliminate the fear, but for Andrews and millions of others it could make that next trip a little easier to take.
Researchers aren't sure yet how far in advance they can predict clear air turbulence. That's one of the questions they hope to answer as the research continues. The new turbulence forecasting method could be available for pilots in the next one to two years.
The American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
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Commercial airplanes run into severe turbulence 5,000 times a year. Most of it happens above 10,000 feet, and the injury claims alone track into the tens of millions of dollars.
