(Wind) Shear terror.
James Fallows in the New York Times:
Air travel has become so safe in large part because of a profound commitment from the people in charge to learn from tragedies — what aviation experts call “lessons written in blood.” In 1956, the Eisenhower administration responded to an airline collision over the Grand Canyon by beginning the decades-long process that would eventually make U.S. airline travel one of the safest forms of transportation the world has ever known. In 2009, the Obama administration responded to the Buffalo crash by overseeing a new set of reforms. With the Potomac crash of 2025, another reckoning was at hand. It would be up to the Trump administration to learn from this lesson written in blood.
But the Trump administration has displayed an extraordinary unwillingness to learn new lessons, and in some cases it seems to be unlearning the old ones. In a news conference following the crash, President Trump complained that the N.T.S.B. method was too slow, and he said he already had a good idea why people had died: D.E.I. hiring practices during the Obama and Biden administrations.
Unfortunately, new research confirms that predictions that climate change will lead to increased turbulence are coming true. A recent study led by Professor Paul Williams and Dr. Mark Prosser of University of Reading (whose work informed this article) showed a significant increase in severe turbulence over major flight routes in the past four decades, a trend directly linked to the warming of our planet.
How is climate change contributing to more turbulence? “Essentially, global warming is creating larger temperature differences in the atmosphere,” says Williams, a professor of atmospheric science. “Those differences intensify wind shear in jet streams, leading to more frequent and intense clear-air turbulence.”
Wind shear has increased by 15% at cruising altitudes since satellites started observing it in 1979. Experts predict additional increases of 17% to 29% by 2100.