Increased Light, Moderate, and Severe Clear-Air Turbulence in Response to Climate Change

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to strengthen the vertical wind shears at aircraft cruising altitudes within the atmospheric jet streams. Such a strengthening would increase the prevalence of the shear instabilities that generate clear-air turbulence. Climate modelling studies have indicated that the amount of moderate-or-greater clear-air turbulence on transatlantic flight routes in winter will increase significantly in future as the climate changes. However,the individual responses of light,moderate,and severe clear-air turbulence have not previously been studied,despite their importance for aircraft operations. Here,we use climate model simulations to analyse the transatlantic wintertime clear-air turbulence response to climate change in five aviation-relevant turbulence strength categories. We find that the probability distributions for an ensemble of 21 clear-air turbulence diagnostics generally gain probability in their right-hand tails when the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is doubled. By converting the diagnostics into eddy dissipation rates,we find that the ensembleaverage airspace volume containing light clear-air turbulence increases by 59%(with an intra-ensemble range of 43%–68%),light-to-moderate by 75%(39%–96%),moderate by 94%(37%–118%),moderate-to-severe by 127%(30%–170%),and severe by 149%(36%–188%). These results suggest that the prevalence of transatlantic wintertime clear-air turbulence will increase significantly in all aviation-relevant strength categories as the climate changes.