By Paul Homewood
The whole of the media’s scare story that turbulence is getting worse hinges entirely on one single study, reported by Sky last year:
In other words, it is largely based on just one spot in the North Atlantic, which shows an increase of just 9.7 hours a year in severe turbulence since 1979.
And we are supposed to believe that has any statistical significance at all? That it is representative of the rest of the world?
Or that we had the same ability to measure turbulence back in 1979?
Or that aircraft were flying at the same altitude then?
In reality the Reading study by Paul Williams did not even attempt to measure turbulence events as actually recorded by pilots. Instead his findings are all based on re-analysis of CAT (clean air turbulence) diagnostics, such as temperatures and wind fields, which are in turn provided by Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models.
Any similarity with actual turbulence events is entirely coincidental!
In short, the whole scam is based on computer modelling.
It should be pointed out that Paul Williams has made a career out of studying turbulence, and to be fair has come up with some useful recommendations for the aviation industry about how to better predict turbulence.
But can we trust his research when his livelihood depends on it?