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Could 'Re-Engineering' Earth Help Ease the Hurricane Threat? (nbcnews.com)
As hurricanes continue to increase in frequency and intensity, a $10-billion-a-year project proposes injecting sulfate into the atmosphere to cool down the Earth and reduce the number of hurricanes by 50% for a staggering 50 years. From a report: In an attempt to combat climate change, a multinational team of scientists are working on a plan to literally re-engineer the Earth in order to cool it down and reduce the impact of storm systems. For example, a team led by John Moore, who is the head of China's geoengineering research program, is studying how shading sulfate aerosols that are dispersed into the stratosphere could help cool the planet and reduce the number of hurricane occurrences. In an interview with Popular Mechanics, outlining how the plan works, Moore asserts, "We're basically mimicking a volcano and saying we're going to put 5 billion tons of sulfates a year into the atmosphere 20 kilometers high, and we'll do that for 50 years." In their current research model, in which the scientists tested a senario where the sulfate injection is doubled over time, the team found that incidences of Katrina-level hurricanes could be maintained (they would be kept at the same rate that we currently see) and that storm surges, which is the rise in seawater level that is caused solely by a storm, could be mitigated by half. The researchers noted that the volcanic eruption in 1912 of Katmai in Alaska "loaded the Northern Hemisphere with aerosol [sulfates], and [was] followed by the least active hurricane season on record." Moore explains that warmer waters can spark and fuel hurricanes, and cooling them with shading sulfates reduces the size and intensity of these hurricanes.
Don't build so darn near the shoreline. And don't build on former riverbeds or other lowland that's a candidate for flooding. Also keep some areas of forest and ponds to slow and absorb runoff water.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
No cite, no credibility.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E23.html
Landfalling US hurricanes are trending down the last 140 years. All categories (1-4+) are trending down.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Only the North Atlantic has seen a slight uptick in hurricanes the last 15 years. The eastern North Pacific has been pretty flat. Tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean have been down. As have cyclones in the South Pacific (off Australia). And cyclones in the western North Pacific have been mostly flat with a recent downward trend.
So if you cherry-pick your data from just the one storm basin which fits your preconceived expectations and ignore all the others, yes hurricanes have been increasing in frequency and intensity.
Well, tropical cyclones actually have become both more frequent (doi:10.1038/nature07234) and intense (doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00262.1) over the past 30 years, however the 3 meter/second increase in the wind speed over the past 30 years isn't proof we're looking at AGW.
IPCC's models are somewhat mixed as to the frequency and intensity of future cyclones. They do predict more intense precipitation during cyclones.
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If you want to be pedantic they are called typhoons in the pacific
love is just extroverted narcissism
The reason it wasn't a hurricane when it made landfall was that it had undergone an extratropical transition before landfall. Only tropical storms are hurricanes. The intensity was sufficient for the case.
The reason it was such a big deal was that New Jersey/NY had not seen a hurricane since about 1988, and no direct hits since 1985 - I remember, because I had to evacuate that year. In the meantime, construction was performed by people who had forgotten that, yes, we do get hurricanes there, just very rarely. A lot of that construction was swamped and destroyed, with the requisite whining from all involved.
Older people know full well that the area gets hurricanes and lived inland as a result. A wise government policy would prevent new construction in low-lying areas, but good luck getting that to happen in the face of all the money involved.
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