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Hurricane's Eye Reveals a New Power Source
Taking a closer look at the seemingly calm center of a hurricane, NASA researchers have been able to determine a few clues about what powers a hurricane. "Using computer simulations and observations of 1998's Hurricane Bonnie in southern North Carolina, scientists were able to get a detailed view of pockets of swirling, warm humid air moving from the eye of the storm to the ring of strong thunderstorms in the eyewall that contributed to the intensification of the hurricane. The findings suggest that the flow of air parcels between the eye and eye wall — largely believed trivial in the past — is a key element in hurricane intensity and that there's more to consider than just the classic 'in-up-and-out' flow pattern. The classic pattern says as air parcels flow 'in' to the hurricane's circulation, they rise 'up,' form precipitating clouds and transport warm air to the upper atmosphere before moving 'out' into surrounding environmental air."
Maybe they could have referenced the Eye of Sauron to make the title a little more misleading.
The angry fist of God. Repent or you shall be smoten.
Nice find submitter. Unfortunately the article isn't in print yet, I'd like to look at what model they used (I presume it was WRF. We are able to simulate hurricanes at unprecedented resolution today, resolving convective features that just weren't there before in coarsers simulations. Coupling this numerical finding with observations makes a strong case.
This is big news, if it pans out, by the way. Certain aspects of hurricanes are still somewhat of a mystery. We are pretty good at tracking their path today but are still pretty bad at forecasting their intensity. This work will certainly help with understanding what determines the intensity. Very nifty stuff.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Is there a way to break up these moisture exchanges that "fuel" the hurricane (the article used a rather poor analogy about 'raising octane')? Like we do with forest fires, can we do some creative cloud seeding to either reduce their intensity, or perhaps alter their paths away from densely populated areas?
John
I thought we already knew that hurricanes happen because George Bush doesn't care about black people.
Before we go interupting hurricanes, perhaps we should better understand why they form? Basically they exchange energy between the oceans and the atmosphere. If we "preempt" the formation of hurricanes, what consequences would that have to the earth?
These storms do form for a reason. And the amount of energy released by these storms is enormous.
NASA was able to detect the hot air pockets in the center of a hurricane using a clever indirect method. They dispatched two solar-powered rovers with B&W cameras to the center of hurricane Bonnie.
Since the rovers carried no atmospheric equipment, they used the haze apparent in B&W stills to estimate the moisture density of the air, and obtained a temperature estimate using an IR camera.
Of course, the major aim of the Bonnie mission was to search for life within the hurricane, so the rovers were equipped with a rock abrasion tool (RAT), an alpha particle detector, an extremely accurate iron detector, and some magnets.
Read about the Hurricane Exploration Rover Mission
Unfortunately, no. Hurricanes are way too big and generate way too much energy for us to have an effect.
This will answer all of your questions about trying to destroy hurricanes.
There was an article in Scientific American about a year or so ago that had a cover story about this. The authors posited that if we had accurate enough forecasts, we could modify the initial conditions (through some sort of perturbation) before the storm even started, and get it to, for instance, form over the open sea instead of over land.
But such forecasts are probably not possible for, say, 50 years at least, and that assumes we have much, much better observational data than we do today (and of course Moore's Law holds true, or something like it).
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
I understand that predicting hurricane strength and path is important for evacuations and hurricane preparations, but how about some research on disrupting hurricanes?
Hahahah. Man controlling the weather. That's priceless. There is no way humans could ever have any effect on such a large and complex system.
I mean, come on. In 3012, Slashdot headlines are going to read something like, "Scientists Trap a Solar Flare Inside Small Tupperware Container", and someone's going to come along and go, "Oy, is that a good idea?"
But then, potential power sources always get consideration despite the consequences. Exhibit A: the internal combustion engine.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
Hurricanes are not the only big power source around climate events. With the power of lightning you can get nothing less than 1.2 Gigawatts, just enough to power up a time machine built inside a DeLorean. And thunderstorms is far more frequent than hurricanes.
Why do crazies like yellow text on black background so much? Most of the chemtrail sites have this same setup.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
As I learned from watching the Sci-Fi channel, the solution will invariably involve detonating a nuclear weapon.
win/win ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?