They introduced a lot in SU9 in the department of CFD etc, but they didn’t change the thermal model. Martial went into detail about this. Specifically mentioning that the amount of reports about ‘excessive turbulence’ lowered a lot during winter, and now we’re getting back into spring/summer, it’s being reported again.
So no (at least as I understood it), they didn’t change thermals/turbulence. You might notice it a bit more with the new CFD on some planes, but they system itself wasn’t changed… Yet…
(it will be iterated upon for gliders). It’s simply that the sun is dumping a load more energy into the northern hemisphere ground 
but yes, it’s real, and I’m happy it’s in the sim.