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Ambience: airplane experiencing turbulence

A few dips and shakes are fairly routine on a plane ride, but severe turbulence is another matter. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. On average, there are 20 serious injuries caused by extreme gusty wind conditions each year. Jim Watson is the manager of the Turbulence Prediction and Warning Systems project at Langley Research Center. His team developed a new tool for pilots one that lets them see turbulence in the skies the same way that they see weather on radar.

“One of the technologies that we developed was called Enhanced Turbulence Radar, which is an enhancement to the existing weather radar that's already on commercial transports that will pick up turbulence in the atmosphere and directly relate it to the airplane itself such that the pilots get an indication of the severity level of the turbulence. The significant advantage of this new system, is that it will be able to predict the severity level approximately 40 miles ahead of the aircraft. This is about a four to five minute warning time for most commercial transports, so this will give pilots and flight attendants enough time to get the cabin secured, people into their seats, and all the equipment secured no matter what the phase of flight is. So, this will be a significant enhancement to getting people into their seats, buckled up, which is the primary mitigation factor for turbulence encounters. Right now, the existing commercial transports, there has not been a lot of accuracy in that system, and sometimes people, even though they go to their seats, the plane does not encounter turbulence, so there's sort of a false security there. But with the new improved accuracy of this system, the overall safety benefits will be significant.”

Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from NASA. I’m Jim Metzner.

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