Keep your seat belt on, listen to the pilot, and remember to breathe when the ride gets rocky.

Stay belted in and do what the captain says, and in-flight turbulence won’t be such a headache.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—All 179 passengers on board the Continental flight from Rio de Janeiro to Houston landed safely last Monday, despite being tossed about the cabin during severe air turbulence. And they likely won’t be the last group of passengers with bumps and bruises. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), air turbulence is the leading cause of airplane injuries. And stronger storms triggered by global warming may make turbulence worse: The International Panel on Climate Change has suggested that global warming causes water temperatures to warm, and the rising heat from those waters can lead to more disturbances in the upper atmosphere. It’s those upper-air disturbances that cause in-flight turbulence.

“Air is constantly moving across the surface of the earth,” says William Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation. Anything from thunderstorms to mountains or uneven terrain can interrupt that flow and cause turbulence, he explains. But the fact that turbulence can’t always be seen makes it difficult to predict. In the case of the Houston flight on Monday, which Voss calls “a real head-scratcher,” the pilot encountered “clear-air” turbulence, which means the phenomenon wasn’t in the vicinity of storms or mountains. “It’s a nagging problem the industry has,” Voss says, noting that aviation officials at NASA and other government agencies are working on programs that will detect turbulence before pilots encounter it.