When travelling by air, you may experience some turbulence during your journey. Passengers on a flight may experience a rough part of a journey while in the air. But what is turbulence and what causes it? To help you understand what’s really going on when you feel turbulence on a plane, National Geographic has explained the key points.
What is turbulence? Turbulence is a “violent or unsteady movement of air or water, or of some other fluid”, according to Oxford Languages. @pilot_onthegram Why is it that we experience the worst turbulence when having nervous flyers on board 😩 #pilotonthegram #turbulence #kingair ♬ original sound - Pilot_onthegram What causes turbulence on a plane? The National Geographic website explains that “rough air happens everywhere, from ground level to far above cruising altitude.” Referring to the weather.
gov website, National Geographic explains that “the most common turbulence experienced by flyers has three common causes: mountains, jet streams, and storms.” As air encounters mountains, it forms waves like the way the ocean’s waves crash on a beach. Some air is able to pass the mountain smoothly but other air masses “crowd against the mountains themselves”, giving them no other place to go than up.
The National Geographic website adds: “These 'mountain waves' can propagate as wide, gentle oscillations into the atmosphere, but they can also break up into many tumultuous currents, which we experience as turbulence.” Jet s.