What exactly is turbulence and why is it bumpy. Why isn’t it one gust of wind that you feel. Was just on the plan and it felt like we were flying over rocks. Air travel is insane and very interesting.
In: 4
Turbulence is caused by changes in the air around the plane. The Earth’s atmosphere is made up of different layers of air that can move at different speeds and directions. When the plane passes through these different layers, it can create a disturbance in the airflow, leading to turbulence.
There are different types of turbulence:
Clear-air turbulence occurs when there are no visible signs, like clouds, to indicate its presence. It can be caused by jet streams, mountains, or changes in temperature. Convective turbulence is usually associated with stormy weather or thunderstorms.
In a turbulent stream the speed of air changes rapidly in space and time, as it consists of “vortexes” of multiple scale. Air in these vortexes hits your plane from different directions, so for you it feels like a bumpy ride.
As an example of how a turbulent flow *may* look like, see pictures of [Kelvin-Helmholtz instability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin%E2%80%93Helmholtz_instability).
Flying entails pushing lots of air down in order to stay up. the wing accomplishes this by slicing through enormous volumes of air and changing its direction. The more the direction is changed, the stronger the lift. Turbulence is lots of wind blowing in unpredictable directions, so the amount of direction change the wings cause, and therefore the lift, varies quickly and randomly.
There’s wind turbulence, and also pressure differentials. You know how things expand as they get got? Well, if the atmosphere expands (or contracts) due to heat differentials, then the plane will encounter thicker, or less dense air. Less dense air causes it to fall, thicker air allows it to climb more easily. Rapidly encountering pockets of hot or cool air, like you’ll find Iin turbulent conditions, means planes shudder and jolt, as you’d expect.
On a calm day you’re flying through uniform air, think about it as a lake with zero waves, and your boat will just glide across it smoothly.
On a turbulent day, it’s like being in a boat on rough seas, the water surface is wavy and tossing your boat around.
In reality it is far more complex, we would need to talk about how random turbulent airflow can be, but the principle is the same. The plane is riding on an ocean of air, and the air is moving around in crazy ways.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=turbulence&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all
When you travel on land, your car/feet/bike stays in contact with the surface, so you feel ups and downs on the ground/road. When you travel on water, your boat or whatever floats on the surface and you feel the ups and downs of the water as it sloshes around.
When you travel in an aircraft, it is supported by the air. Air isn’t still, but has motion. Mentally this is confusing because you can’t see the air swirling around. Pilots get reports of turbulence that was directly experienced and forecasts when the conditions tend to cause turbulence. Wind flowing around buildings or terrain and hot air rising from paved surfaces also causes updrafts.
Just curious why you ask reddit and not do a simple Google search and read one of the thousands of descriptions already available from reputable sources… and probably visuals and videos to boot. Weird.
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