Image: Courtesy of NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
As another active hurricane season in the Atlantic winds down, some atmospheric scientists say they have the tools to stop or slow the powerful storms. Their efforts, however, are hampered by a lack of funding and tricky legal issues.
Until recently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been investigating whether seeding storm clouds with pollution-size aerosols (particles suspended in gas) might help slow tropical cyclones. Computer models suggest that deploying aerosols can have “an appreciable impact on tropical cyclone intensity,” writes William Cotton, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University. He and his colleagues recently reviewed such work in the Journal of Weather Modification. In fact, human pollution may already be weakening storms, including August’s Hurricane Irene. “[Computer] models all predicted that the intensity of Irene would be much greater than it was,” Cotton notes. “Was that because they did not include aerosol effects?”
Other would-be storm stoppers, including Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, have focused on feeding cold water to the hot storms to slow their momentum. The Gates-backed plan proposes using a fleet of wave-powered rafts to spread a slick of colder ocean water pumped up from the depths in the path of an onrushing storm. The trouble with that process is that it could prove unwieldy. It would require hundreds of devices, and because storms are so difficult to track, placing them would be a challenge. The proof of concept will soon get a test of sorts in Hawaii. The U.S. Navy plans to deploy a prototype device that extracts energy from the temperature difference between surface and deep-ocean water. The device will involve pumping cool water to the ocean surface, in much the same manner as would be required to stop a typhoon.
Would dispelling storms with cold water be a good idea? Tropical cyclones, for all their destructive force, are one of the planet’s ways of redistributing heat from the tropics to the poles. Shutting that down might have unforeseen consequences, and shifting a storm’s course could spawn punitive action from people in the new path, as a team of engineers, public policy experts and atmospheric scientists wrote in Environmental Science and Technology in April.
Regardless, for all their power, tropical cyclones are sensitive. To exploit that sensitivity, scientists would need accurate information on a storm’s future course, says meteorologist Ross Hoffman of Atmospheric and Environmental Research. But the U.S. government is cutting funding for the satellites that make such tracking and prediction possible. For now flood maps and evacuation plans remain our best protection.
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
16 Comments
Add CommentIn the wake of a hurricane the ocean turmoil churns nutrient materials from the deep resulting in a plankton bloom and a huge jump in the carbon cycle behind it as the plankton absorbs carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrate energy for themselves and oxygen as a waste product. Nature is a balance , squelching hurricanes without doing more research on the positive impacts of the storms would be cutting our own throats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are absolutely right. My guess is that hurricanes, as damaging to the human systems as they may be, contribute to the natural systems in maintaining some sort balance to the ecosystem at large. Furthermore, it makes my skin crawl whenever I read the words "Homeland Security", especially on a topic that has less to do with the human bureaucracy of security than it has to do with the honorable goals of science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me think about this a minute.... uh... no.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly in the mythical land of MMGW where all things are the fault of humankind and therefore controllable would this question even be asked.
But if we accept that we can stop hurricanes, can we then start them at will? Who will be in charge of Hurricane Weaponization?
So what you're saying is human effects are already affecting hurricanes?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like we'd better keep polluting for a safer Earth.
Instead of mucking around with our weather, why don't these supposedly brainy guys apply their efforts to controlling world population and carbon emissions?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are making the classic fallacy in assuming that CO2 and pollution are one and the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may shock you to realize that a great number of people who are concerned about pollution believe that Man Made Global Warming is anything more that an pseudoscientific buffoonery and that the belief in MMGW is a far greater threat to the people of the planet than MMGW itself.
Thousands are already dying of starvation because we grow bio-fuels instead of food. Millions more face starvation because the eco-jihadists have convinced African countries that genetically modified foods, fertilizers and pesticides are bad.
The Eco movement is utterly anti-humanist and self centered. Ask yourself when was the last time you saw a Greenpeace volunteer pick up some garbage, clean a stream or do something that didn't involve a camera, a sound bite or raising $$$ or suing somebody. The Eco movement is all about politics and power.
We need a few ships surrounding the hurricane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey will be equipped with Capacity Changer and emit a charge into the sea rotating-wise, opposite the hurricane rotation. That will slow down the hurricane effect and could even kill it.
A hurricane is started by magnetic/electrostatic field generated by the earth itself at that place.
Every problem has one solution: Giant Robots!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds iffy at best and a eco-disaster at worst. How about we just use the money to build storm safe structures and shoreline barriers to minimize erosion? Occam's Razor is usually best.
Scientists are supposed to be sceptical, thinking people. During the course of my life I have met people with multiple degrees in science, yet are incapable of rational thought. We see a number in here the comment section (not restricted to this series of comments), but do they come from a background in science or are they truly interested in science?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo true rational scientist, in this day and age, would do anything to save human lives and destroy biodiversity on this planet. I believe acting to curtail the quantity of irrational human eating machine would be my first priority.
If I could live my life over that is what I should chose to dedicate my life to. A virus or bacterium that prevents spontaneous pregnancy after sex. Every child will be wanted and for a long while one would be the limit.
I would like to propose that hurricanes be seeded from above with planes full of crushed dry ice, while the hurricane is still over the ocean. This would take heat away from the hurricane and give the water vapor something to start the condensation process. Because a plane could fly right over the hurricane, this would avoid the challenge of a moving target and would be colder than supplying cold water. If this works, the hurricane would be drained of its heat and water while still over the ocean. I agree that stopping hurricanes might have unintended consequences, but I suspect that stopping only a major hurricane bound for land would not cause as much damage to mankind as would be caused by the landfall of the hurricane. I bet a consortium of insurance companies on the hook for the potential damage might even form a consortium to foot the bill, and if they cannot cooperate, the government could impose a tax on hurricane insurance companies designed to make all the insurance companies chip in fairly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have any idea just how large a hurricane can be? Not unusual to stretch over one thousand miles. Also, how high the supercells reach? There are not enough aircraft or dry ice capable of reaching the required heights. All that having been said, no one knows what the actual results would be. Instead of raining out the storm it might cause intensification due to increased temperature gradient. You might instead build a superstorm and increase damage potential exponentially. Some experiments have been done with your idea in mind and the results were not as predicted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for pointing out the anti-people focus of the Eco movement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's refreshing to see that some people are honest about the aims of the movement.
Anyone up for an afternoon match of cricket followed by a genocide?
First I'd have to agree with hcc2009, We should be doing something to control population, hopefully to drasically reduce it. But if part of the purpose of this is to control global climate, wouldn't we have call that and anything else we do intentionally on a global scale, geoengineering?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHurricanes are important, especially as global temperatures increase, to move heat to the upper atmosphere (mainly in the form of evaporating and condensing water), where it can more easily dissipate into space.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's an idea that started as a misinterpretation of someone else's. Find a tropical ocean area where hurricanes are typically born. Build a ring of rafts, each raft with a mast. Anchor the ring so it can swivel with the wind. Put sails on all the masts, mostly to form a wall. On an upwind quarter to half, the sails would be adjusted to deflect the wind spiraling into the center of the ring, where it will necessarily rise to form a small stationary tropical storm. Many such rings would take heat from the water, which is the cause of hurricanes in general. Start operating these systems early in the hurricane season and keep water temperature down, thereby inhibiting 'wild' hurricanes forming.
Of course this only deals with heat and not the real cause of the problem, constantly increasing numbers of humans farting CO2. Therefore it requires maintaining civilization's infrastructures, and their cooling atmospheric sulfate pollution. I don't see a lot of hope for these problems being properly solved.
Have to take the heat away from the storm. Could it be done earlier before it gets too big? Could seeding and such be applied closer to the source --- off Africa?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I am about to suggest may, to some, sound like the ravings of a madman but here goes: As Wiki notes "The eye of a tropical cyclone- the scientific name for a hurricane- is normally circular in shape, and is typically 30–65 km (19–40 miles) in diameter, though eyes as small as 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) and as large as 370 kilometres (230 mi) have been observed.[4][5]" As we know they evolve over large water masses where the water temperature exceeds 24 celcius to a depth of greater than 25m which are generally in areas that are not inhabited. Hence, I wonder whether an evolving Tropical Cyclone could be destabilised sufficiently to destroy it via the explosion of a device at some level through the centre of the cyclone. Of course I cannot even guess whether the explosion would need to occur at the waters level, below the water line, higher up in the air column or whether the cyclone would reform but I would like to start dialogue on the idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this