[Image: Freerange Stock]
A Qantas Boeing 737 got an unexpected reality check on May 4, 2024, when severe turbulence smacked into the plane during descent into Brisbane, injuring both crew and passengers. According to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the bump was so brutal it caught the captain off guard, which, let’s be honest, isn’t the kind of phrase you want anywhere near a flight report.
But this isn’t just a one-off jolt from a rogue cloud. Nope, we’re talking about a much bigger, stormier picture.
Thunderstorms in Australia are starting to flex harder with violent updrafts and vicious downbursts – all of which spell serious trouble for anything with wings. Downbursts, especially, have a nasty history of wrecking aircraft, and new research suggests climate change is adding extra ammo to their arsenal, per The Conversation.
Thanks to global warming, there’s more water vapour clogging up the lower atmosphere. Why? Because for every 1°C of warming, the atmosphere can sponge up about 7% more moisture, and it’s mostly stolen from nearby warmer seas. That ocean steam then fuels stronger, moodier thunderstorms. So yes, hotter seas mean angrier skies.
And when those storm clouds gather over eastern Australia, they don’t just look menacing, they are menacing. The biggest problem for planes? Low-level wind changes that are as sudden and savage as a plot twist in a soapie.
Meet the microburst, a small, intense downburst just a few kilometres wide, but strong enough to toss a plane around like a paper dart. These bad boys are pure chaos in motion: abrupt changes in wind speed and direction that can jolt an aircraft in every possible direction, up, down, sideways, you name it.
Need more proof? In 2016, Brisbane Airport clocked a 157km/h microburst gust that shredded three planes sitting innocently on the tarmac. And it’s not just damage to parked planes. On descent or ascent, these sneaky gusts can make a plane gain or lose altitude in a flash. Cue white knuckles and possibly a few emergency barf bags.
Predicting microbursts is tough – they’re small, fast, and love catching forecasters napping. That’s where machine learning swoops in. The researchers of the aforementioned study threw eight different machine learning models at mountains of data from the Bureau of Meteorology, digging deep to find the weather cocktail most likely to unleash these sky-punching gusts.
The verdict? Eastern Australia is primed for more of them. More heat, more moisture, more trouble.
One storm in 2018 dropped microbursts on six regional airports across New South Wales: Bourke, Walgett, Coonamble, Moree, Narrabri, and Gunnedah. Regional airports often rely on small planes with fewer than 50 seats, which are way more vulnerable to microbursts. Think Mini Cooper in a wind tunnel.
The researchers zoomed in on regional case studies and found a clear pattern: high cloud water content triggers powerful downward air currents, and when that heavy air hits the ground, it fans out in all directions like a slap from the sky. It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous.
Takeoff and landing are already the riskiest parts of flying. Throw in a sudden gust that flips from tailwind to headwind and you’ve got a recipe for disaster, or at the very least, a very rough touchdown.
Their findings spell out a stormier, riskier future for eastern Australian aviation. While big airports like Sydney and Brisbane need to up their microburst game, it’s the inland regional airports, often running smaller aircraft, that are sitting ducks.
Yes, flying is still statistically very safe at just 1.13 accidents per million flights. But with global passenger numbers skyrocketing, even a small uptick in danger could mean a whole lot more people feeling it in their stomachs (or worse).
So far, the focus on climate-related aviation risks has mostly been on high-altitude threats like jet stream wobbles and clear air turbulence. But as this research shows, the real turbulence could be waiting much closer to the ground.
Buckle up, Australia, the skies are getting feistier.
[Source: The Conversation]
