Speaker 1: Already and this is this is the daily this is
Speaker 1: the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday, the twenty
Speaker 1: eighth of May. I'm Sam, I'm Sara. In the last week,
Speaker 1: there have been two major incidents of turbulence hitting commercial flights,
Speaker 1: causing injury. Yesterday, twelve were injured on a Qatar Airways
Speaker 1: flight from Dohart to Dublin while in the air over Turkey. Now,
Speaker 1: in today's podcast, we're going to talk to a professor
Speaker 1: of aviation about why we're seeing a sudden spike in turbulence,
Speaker 1: if there's anything to be worried about, if we've got
Speaker 1: a flight soon, and why you should always wear a
Speaker 1: seat belt. But first, Sarah, what is making headlines this morning?
Speaker 2: As many as two thousand people are feared trapped beneath
Speaker 2: the rubble of a landslide in Papua New Guinea. The
Speaker 2: landslide struck a remote village in p Andng's Anger Province
Speaker 2: early on Friday morning. Local authorities are currently working with
Speaker 2: the UN after rescue efforts were hampered by road blockages
Speaker 2: and shifting terrain around the site of the incident. The
Speaker 2: UN and PMG's Defense Force are providing emergency shelter, food
Speaker 2: and water to those affected.
Speaker 1: Regional property values and rent prices have increased to record
Speaker 1: high levels. That's according to new data from core Logic.
Speaker 1: House prices in the regions are also increasing at a
Speaker 1: higher rate than homes in the capital cities. In the
Speaker 1: three months to April, property values in regional Australia grew
Speaker 1: by two point one percent. That's compared to one point
Speaker 1: seven percent growth in capital cities. Over the same period,
Speaker 1: we also saw rents go up in regional areas. They
Speaker 1: grew six point three percent. That's up from four point
Speaker 1: nine percent.
Speaker 2: As state of emergency has been lifted in New Caledonia
Speaker 2: after deadly riots in the French territory this month. Seven
Speaker 2: people died during protests, which came after France's lower house
Speaker 2: passed a bill to allow French residents who have lived
Speaker 2: in New Caledonia for ten years to vote in local elections. Protesters,
Speaker 2: some of whom belonged to the island's indigenous Canaric people,
Speaker 2: argued the bill would threaten their political influence. French President
Speaker 2: Emmanuel Macron confirmed the state of emergency would be lifted
Speaker 2: on Tuesday morning, after he visited the region last week.
Speaker 1: And today's good news. Australian paleontologists have discovered the fossils
Speaker 1: of three never before seen ancient animal species, referred to
Speaker 1: as the echidna puss. The monitorum species has characteristics of
Speaker 1: both the Echidna and the platypus. Fossils dating back over
Speaker 1: one hundred million years were found in Lightning Ridge in
Speaker 1: New South Wales. Professor Tim Flannery said it's like discovering
Speaker 1: a whole new civilization, so Zara, This podcast episode might
Speaker 1: not be for everyone, right.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, I think if you are
Speaker 2: someone that is a scared flier or an anxious flier,
Speaker 2: and or someone who's getting on a plane like I
Speaker 2: am later this week and just not in the headspace
Speaker 2: to want to listen to an entire episode dedicated to turbulence,
Speaker 2: feel free to skip today's episode. We will be back
Speaker 2: again tomorrow. But look, it's not for everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I do think that these events over the
Speaker 1: last couple of weeks, mainly the Singapore Airlines flight and
Speaker 1: now this Guitar Airlines flight, has led to some very
Speaker 1: interesting questions coming up in you know chat groups.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, it's been dominating the group
Speaker 2: chat for me about whether or not this is a
Speaker 2: new thing. Yeah, this sort of very violent turbulence that
Speaker 2: we've seen injuries and in some cases even death as
Speaker 2: a result of so very keen to listen to this chat.
Speaker 1: There's also a whole climate change element we're going to
Speaker 1: get into, so instead of us hypothesizing, I put these
Speaker 1: questions to Professor Jason Middleton. He was the head of
Speaker 1: unsw's Department of Aviation from nineteen ninety five until twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: He's also a commercial pilot himself. Now since then he's
Speaker 1: been an emeritus professor looking at airborne research. Here's that chat.
Speaker 1: Professor Middleton, thank you so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: the podcast this morning.
Speaker 3: I'm pleased to be here.
Speaker 1: So we've seen two major turbulence events in the past week.
Speaker 1: Is there something bigger going on here?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so. The whole issue of turbulence
Speaker 3: is that it's highly unpredictable and it occurs because of
Speaker 3: the basically the heat engine of the sun. The sun
Speaker 3: creates a lot of heat on the surface of the ocean,
Speaker 3: and that heat is transferred to the atmosphere and creates
Speaker 3: clouds that is always going to be with us, and
Speaker 3: it is difficult to predict.
Speaker 1: Has there been more turbulence recorded in recent years than
Speaker 1: there was, say thirty or forty years ago, that.
Speaker 3: Or may or may not be the case of it's
Speaker 3: been recorded. Remember that these days everyone has phones, everyone
Speaker 3: has powerful equipment to record everything, whereas in the old
Speaker 3: days they didn't. So a lot of things that are
Speaker 3: here to happen more often now perhaps don't happen more
Speaker 3: often or only just recorded. It's happening more often.
Speaker 1: Right, interesting, So basically what I'm hearing from you is
Speaker 1: that you've seen I mean, we've had the Singapore Airlines
Speaker 1: incident last week, We've had now a Qatar Airlines incident
Speaker 1: in the last couple of days. Are you saying that
Speaker 1: this is no cause for alarm and just almost kind
Speaker 1: of part of air travel, but it's just being recorded
Speaker 1: more well at the moment.
Speaker 3: We can talk about the possible influences of climate change
Speaker 3: a little later, But yeah, the earth is warming fello
Speaker 3: drastically in some ways, but in other ways. The impact
Speaker 3: on local turbulence, for example, is unlikely to even be measurable.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about that climate change idea. So
Speaker 1: the general principle is experts have come out and said
Speaker 1: as climate change progresses, turbulence will become more frequent.
Speaker 3: I think that's true. But because there'll be more energy
Speaker 3: in the atmosphere, the whole one is greater solar heating,
Speaker 3: you've got greater evaporation. And for people who want to
Speaker 3: know the technical stuff, once evaporation happens, the water vapor
Speaker 3: turns ultimately into droplets. From water vapor to droplets, there's
Speaker 3: a release of what's called latent heat, the release of
Speaker 3: a lot of heat, and that helps boil the clouds
Speaker 3: up or make some look as though they're boiling upwards,
Speaker 3: and in fact they are. The convective turbulence is going
Speaker 3: right up in the atmosphere to way above where normal
Speaker 3: airliners fly.
Speaker 1: You wear a commercial pilot yourself. Give me a sense
Speaker 1: of what it feels like as a pilot when there
Speaker 1: is an incident of turbulence.
Speaker 3: I actually went into a thunderstorm inadvertently. Once the sky
Speaker 3: gets a lot darker, the turbulence gets stronger. You have
Speaker 3: your auter pilot on to try and help you keep
Speaker 3: the aircraft straight and level, the turbulence gets the point
Speaker 3: where if you're not banging your head against the roof
Speaker 3: because the seatbell is holding you down, you're banging your
Speaker 3: head inadvertently against the side of the cockpit. When you
Speaker 3: get to that stage, you do a U turret and
Speaker 3: gave back on your reciprocal direction and get out of
Speaker 3: there as quickly as possible. That's the standard process, and
Speaker 3: it's fairly scary because ultimately very severe turbulence can cause
Speaker 3: damage to the aeroplane.
Speaker 1: Could it be severe enough that the plane itself could crash.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, or you have structural damage to the control
Speaker 3: services for example. So yeah, all airlines will try and
Speaker 3: avoid turbulence, so I'll avoid big thunderstorms. Now, the weather
Speaker 3: radars that are in aeroplanes and not actually weather radars,
Speaker 3: they're a bit like the Bureau of Meteorologies radar. They
Speaker 3: are rain radars. They only get reflection from decent sized
Speaker 3: water droplets, not from vapor, so that when you're flying
Speaker 3: in an area where there's rain, the radar, even on
Speaker 3: the best jets these days, will give you a lovely
Speaker 3: return of where the rainfall is intense, and you'll know
Speaker 3: then to avoid that. But areas surrounding that might still
Speaker 3: have strong updrafts and down drafts, but you don't see
Speaker 3: them in the radar. Probably there, but you don't see
Speaker 3: them in the radar.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is that there's ultimately a certain
Speaker 1: level of unforeseen risks that come with turbulence. Is there
Speaker 1: an effort in the aviation community to build tools that
Speaker 1: can better predict where that turbulence is coming from or
Speaker 1: is that almost like kind of predicting God.
Speaker 3: Well, trouble with turbulence is that it's momentary. So for example,
Speaker 3: you can have a zone of turbulence which is really
Speaker 3: intense for one or two minutes with down drafted up,
Speaker 3: and then two minutes later it's gone. The meteorologists can say, look,
Speaker 3: the atmosphere is fairly unstable at the moment. We're going
Speaker 3: to have very intense growth of cumulus clouds and accumulate
Speaker 3: nimbus clouds. This will produce intense turbulence in patches. So
Speaker 3: we know it's going to happen, you don't know exactly
Speaker 3: where it is. So if you look at a smoke
Speaker 3: from a fire, you'll see that you get these billows
Speaker 3: of turbulence and the billows of turbulence are hoighly arising.
Speaker 3: But along with that highly arising, you also get colder
Speaker 3: air from surrounding entering say into a cloud, and that
Speaker 3: color air is denser and it sinks. So in a
Speaker 3: cloud where you've got very strong updrafts, you will also
Speaker 3: have clean, dry air come in from outside at higher levels,
Speaker 3: sinking through that cloud, creating a very strong downburst. Now
Speaker 3: sometimes they go out the bottom of the cloud. When
Speaker 3: they do that, they hit the ground. They're called microbursts.
Speaker 3: So an aeroplane one minute will be an updraft, the
Speaker 3: next minute will be in a downdraft, and next minute
Speaker 3: later the air will be relatively smooth.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, and I think ultimately a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners at the moment are probably thinking about themselves
Speaker 1: and their own air travel and perhaps a holiday they've
Speaker 1: got coming up this year or next year. Is it
Speaker 1: getting to the point where airlines should be enforcing seat
Speaker 1: belt rules whenever you're in your seat, or do we
Speaker 1: need to be thinking of extra safety precautions or are
Speaker 1: you kind of maintaining that position you gave me earlier
Speaker 1: that you know this is not out of the ordinary,
Speaker 1: it's just in the media common sense.
Speaker 3: I mean you need to get up and go to
Speaker 3: the restroom. Occasionally when you're on a long site, I
Speaker 3: like to stretch my legs to avoid DVT, for example.
Speaker 3: So we do encourage people to get up and move
Speaker 3: around a little bit. But the safety issue there was
Speaker 3: that if everyone who was sitting had their seat belts
Speaker 3: on it, then probably only the cabin crew and two
Speaker 3: or three people who got up to go to the
Speaker 3: restroom would be hurt. Now, most people are smart enough
Speaker 3: not to get up in the middle of meal service
Speaker 3: to try and get to the bathroom because the trolley's
Speaker 3: in the way. Nearly all of the passengers during that
Speaker 3: meal service should have had their seat belt on, even loosely,
Speaker 3: and then most of them wouldn't have been hurt. Yes,
Speaker 3: the poor old cabin crew would have still bounced off
Speaker 3: the ceiling. Now, there is one subtle point to this
Speaker 3: that I don't fully understand. It was in the afternoon.
Speaker 3: If you've ever been in Singapore or Hong Kong, Singapore
Speaker 3: particular well, which is right in the equator, you'll find
Speaker 3: the big summer build ups happen. But Singapore ratio runs
Speaker 3: between noon and about two pm. After two pm, the
Speaker 3: big cloud build ups happen, and it gets quite intense
Speaker 3: the afternoon from two pm to about six seven pm,
Speaker 3: but also into the evening you get these huge cumulus
Speaker 3: build ups. Everyone knows they happen. They happen regularly. Why
Speaker 3: the crew didn't see these is a question that we'd
Speaker 3: have to ask the crew to answer. They may not
Speaker 3: have seen that on the radar. The radar might have
Speaker 3: been showing no severe rainfall and those big talk cloud
Speaker 3: tails off and you won't necessarily get rainfall. But why
Speaker 3: they didn't look out the window and see this big
Speaker 3: boiling mass of white cloud, We don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe Professor Middleton to end, I think we'd all benefit
Speaker 1: from some reassuring words for somebody who's an expert in
Speaker 1: this sector. Why should people feel good about flying?
Speaker 3: Well, generally it's the safest form of transport. All pilots
Speaker 3: of all airlines do a good job because you know
Speaker 3: their own skinners on the line. The pilot was always
Speaker 3: the first to the scene of the accident if there's
Speaker 3: an accident, right, and they do their best to fly
Speaker 3: safely as well. People should be confident just to sit
Speaker 3: in an airplane, but do as they're told, get in
Speaker 3: their seat, put the seat belt on, and enjoy the
Speaker 3: fly as best they can. I would find the Singapore
Speaker 3: Lines tomorrow as readily as I would have flown with
Speaker 3: them last week. They're no less safe than they were
Speaker 3: last week or any other airline.
Speaker 1: Good to hear from an expert who's dedicated his career
Speaker 1: to aviation. Professor Middleton, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much, Thanks so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: the daily ours this morning, and I hope if you
Speaker 1: are flying somewhere soon that you have a safe flight
Speaker 1: and apparently always keep your seat belt on. We'll be
Speaker 1: back again in your ears tomorrow morning. Until then, have
Speaker 1: a great day. My name is Lily Madden and I'm
Speaker 1: a proud Yunda Bunjelung Calcuttin woman from Gadaghl Country.
Speaker 3: The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
Speaker 3: the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
Speaker 3: all Aboriginal and torrest Rate island and nations.
Speaker 1: We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
Speaker 1: both past and present.