Controlling Hurricanes?

Phil Shapiro writes "With the cost of hurricane Katrina running as high as $100 billion, the thought of trying to control the severity of hurricanes should be mulled. Dissipating the energy of hurricanes as they're forming might be within the range of the feasible. Scientific American tackles this topic in an article last year, as does this crank. (I admit the crank is me.) Is this type of thing feasible, or is it best not even tried at all?"

Comments

Good answer to this at NOAA

[Excelcia]

This is a common question and there were indeed some experiments at hurricane modification. Most of the common ideas, including some of the ones that the original author proposes, are explained it the NOAA FAQ on tropical storms in the section TROPICAL CYCLONE MODIFICATION AND MYTHS.

From the NOAA FAQ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Found this interesting reply to the parent, from our good friends at NOAA...

Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by (fill in the blank)?

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5f.html

There have been numerous techniques that we have considered over the years to modify hurricanes: seeding clouds with dry ice or Silver Iodide, cooling the ocean with cryogenic material or icebergs, changing the radiational balance in the hurricane environment by absorption of sunlight with carbon black, exploding the hurricane apart with hydrogen bombs, and blowing the storm away from land with giant fans, etc. (Some of these have been addressed in detail in this section of FAQ's.) As carefully reasoned as some of these suggestions are, they all share the same shortcoming: They fail to appreciate the size and power of tropical cyclones. For example, when Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992, the eye and eyewall devastated a swath 20 miles wide. The heat energy released around the eye was 5,000 times the combined heat and electrical power generation of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant over which the eye passed. The kinetic energy of the wind at any instant was equivalent to that released by a nuclear warhead. Perhaps if the time comes when men and women can travel at nearly the speed of light to the stars, we will then have enough energy for brute-force intervention in hurricane dynamics.

Human beings are used to dealing with chemically complex biological systems or artificial mechanical systems that embody a small amount (by geophysical standards) of high-grade energy. Because hurricanes are chemically simple --air and water vapor -- introduction of catalysts is unpromising. The energy involved in atmospheric dynamics is primarily low-grade heat energy, but the amount of it is immense in terms of human experience.

Attacking weak tropical waves or depressions before they have a chance to grow into hurricanes isn't promising either. About 80 of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5 become hurricanes in a typical year. There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop. If the energy released in a tropical disturbance were only 10% of that released in a hurricane, it's still a lot of power, so that the hurricane police would need to dim the whole world's lights many times a year.

Perhaps some day, somebody will come up with a way to weaken hurricanes artificially. It is a beguiling notion. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could do it ?

Perhaps the best solution is not to try to alter or destroy the tropical cyclones, but just learn to co-exist better with them. Since we know that coastal regions are vulnerable to the storms, building codes that can have houses stand up to the force of the tropical cyclones need to be enforced. The people that choose to live in these locations should be willing to shoulder a fair portion of the costs in terms of property insurance - not exorbitant rates, but ones which truly reflect the risk of living in a vulnerable region. In addition, efforts to educate the public on effective preparedness needs to continue. Helping poorer nations in their mitigation efforts can also result in saving countless lives. Finally, we need to continue in our efforts to better understand and observe hurricanes in order to more accurately predict their development, intensification and track.

Re:Easy way to control hurricanes:

[Phanatic1a]

This is 'insightful?'

Take a look at the actual NOAA data, and you find that for the past several decades we have been in a *lull* of hurricane activity, and that's just recently started to swing back the other way.

The NYT has this to say:

Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.

        But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

        From 1970 to 1994, the Atlantic was relatively quiet, with no more than three major hurricanes in any year and none at all in three of those years. Cooler water in the North Atlantic strengthened wind shear, which tends to tear storms apart before they turn into hurricanes.

        In 1995, hurricane patterns reverted to the active mode of the 1950's and 60's.

Only on /. can comments which are nothing but knee-jerk facile reponses which completely ignore the bulk of available data be considered 'insightful.'

Re:Funny...

[dfjghsk]

Interesting that 4 out of 6 of the world's richest companies are American Oil Companies,

It would be interesting if it were true... Two of those THREE are NOT american: Forbes list of largest companies (sorted by profits):

ExxonMobil (U.S.)
Royal Dutch/Shell Group (Netherlands/United Kingdom)
BP (United Kingdom)

Chevron Texaco ranks 7th (ie: not in the top 6), and is a U.S. company.

Re:your idea

[zedmelon]

"...an intuition I had a thousand years ago studying chaos theory...
...alter the path of a hurricane by sacrificing a goat..."

in
dis
tinguishable.

One massive problem with this idea is that weather is still predominantly random from a day-to-day human standpoint.

--
Yeah!!! We deflected Hurricane Vader away from Miami and straight through the heart of downtown Jacksonville!
No you didn't, it was heading to Jacksonville anyway!
Yes we did, remember it started to curve south? We reversed that.
Did not.
Did huh.
--

Until we reduce the chaos in weather prediction enough to know precisely when and where a hurricane will begin--as opposed to "strong liklihood of a possible hurricane in the next few days over in this general area here" or "I'll bet it's hot in Arizona by July"--we'll have no way to know if we changed the hurricane's path sixty miles or six inches.

Of course, if we could get a hurrican through central Minnesota, I suppose that'd be a fair supporting argument for "well, I think it worked."