Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?

[aashaykumar92]

I googled this and see theories as to how to stop hurricanes -- decrease water temperature under eye of storm, send supersonic jets in to revolve and cause hot air to rise, lasers, etc. -- anyone have a simple reason why these haven't been tried or are absolutely crazy?

A follow up: so how can we stop hurricanes?

[SAI_Peregrinus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)

The energy needed to evaporate the water Harvey dumped on land (33 trillion gallons) is roughly: 40.65 kJ/mol (Latent heat of vaporization of water) * 210 mol/gal * 33x10^12 gal = 2.8x10^20 J. That's over half the entire world's energy consumption (not just electricity, also fuel for transportation and such) as of 2010. In about a week. And ignoring the energy in the wind.

They're simply really, really, big. Causing substantial change to them once they've formed is effectively impossible. Stopping the formation is effectively impossible because weather is chaotic, so small changes in one place can cause large changes elsewhere. You might stop one hurricane forming only to create a different one.

The real solution is to kill all the damn butterflies. /s

[irongeek]

We are working on it. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Scientists-say-decline...

[exabrial]

I've wondered the same thing about tornados in Kansas, yet we still wrecklessly mix our warm moist air and cooler dry air with disregard.

[spc476]

This [1] is the NHC report for Hurricane Andrew just prior to landfall in August of 1992. Andrew was small as hurricanes go, and even then, you are talking about hurricane winds (72 MPH/116 KPH at the low end, Andrew was 140 MPH/225 KPH sustained winds) extending outward from the eye (typical eye diameter is 20 miles/32 km) 30 miles/45 km. So you are talking about disrupting a cylinder of wind and rain some 50 miles/80 km across and what? 4 miles/6 km high? That's a lot of energy to disrupt. And that's for Andrew, a small hurricane. Irma has hurricane speed winds out to 75 miles/120 km from the eye, which itself is 23 miles/37 km across.

Good luck.

[1] http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl19...

[Hasknewbie]

I think it's one of those things where people have difficulties realizing the scale of things. For example hurricane Irma is the size of Texas or France. If it hits Florida, people won't need to evacuate Miami, they'll need to evacuate Florida. Think of the logistics it takes to evacuate a whole state basically overnight, and the size of a threat causing such event: if we barely have the know-how to run away in time, do you think we would have any know-how to block something of that magnitude?

[patrick_haply]

Should we stop hurricanes, even if we can?

Yes, hurricanes are destructive, especially to human settlements, but I'd be surprised if there aren't massive ecological benefits to hurricanes in spite of (or possibly because of) the destruction. Forest fires, for example, have well-documented, long-term ecological benefits. Unfortunately it looks like hurricanes aren't studied as much as forest fires.

Just doing some cursory researching online [1] [2], it looks like they basically act as dramatic "flushing" mechanisms:

- end droughts

- distribute heat from the equator towards the poles

- seed dispersal

- redistribute soil/sediments along coastlines and inlane

[1] https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-landfall...

[2] http://sciencing.com/positive-effects-hurricane-4462.html

[gremlinsinc]

All these things could have beneficial ecological purposes...IN moderation... but what happens when they go to extremes ala Climate Change.. when we have 15 cat 5 hurricanes per year..or burn 10 million acres of forest per year...etc..

How much of our current excelling weather patterns are a result of global warming? All interesting questions...

[dagske]

How can we stop hurricanes? First, accept that climate change is real. Second, act on it.

Year after year the global temperature increases and year after year the hurricanes get stronger. All real climate scientists will tell you there's a correlation.

[oldandtired]

Where do I start with this?

I have no issue with climate change being real. Anyone with a modicum of sense can make those observations? However, your second point requires you to believe in the "dogma" of only anthropogenic causes for this climate change. At this point in time, we have no clue (and I mean no clue, irrespective of what any "real" climate scientist might pontificate) about the extent of actual causes of this climate change.

There may be (and I'm willing to give a small level anthropogenic causal effect) some changes that mankind can do to mitigate possible effects of climate change. They are limited and more in the line of defensive than anything else.

And before you ask, No I am not a climate scientist. But my experience with them is that when presented with specific questions related to the energy requirements of their predictions, they refuse to not only answer the raised questions, they will not dispute the energy calculations provided as a basis to the questions.

I have done a series of calculations, in which you can do the same, based on simple mandatory energy requirements that make the predictions of their models simply laughable.

My basic view today is that if a "real" climate scientist says anything, I will take that it that you had better check the silver draw to make sure the cutlery is still there. At this point in time, I consider it to be more pseudo-scientific than phrenology and I don't give that any regard at all.

And that is a pity, because we need some verifiable climate model will give level of predictability. We have none at this time.

[Vanit]

Check out oldandtireds infallible series of calculations at realclimatechange.geocities.com

[oldandtired]

Funny, ha ha.

If you actually took the time, about 2 to 3 hours of work and research, you would quickly see that the various scenarios proposed by these "real" climate scientists are a load of codswallop. As they say here at times, "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" Well a fifth grader can do the calculations with but a little bit of help. If climate scientists were willing to call out their colleagues over the various "unreasonable" scenario results then as a group, I might be more inclined to give them a pass. But they don't, so no.

But so far, I have only had one person on the "anthropogenic" climate change bandwagon who was willing to give it a go. To his merit and credit, he even tried to provide a number of research studies to back his claim (he was not a climate scientist and the papers he referenced are well worth reading). In the end we agreed to disagree on our interpretations of the data presented. He was much more clear and critical thinking than the various "real" climate scientists that I have communicated with over the last two decades.

I have, over the course of nearly forty years, dealt with quite different computer simulations and models and it is so easy to get them wrong, to the extent that for some models, no matter what you put in, you appear to get a reasonable answer out. They're the scary ones, people assume they are right when in fact they are a load of rubbish.

If you were to actually try to do the energy equations, you would see this for yourself. But obviously, you more interested in believing the anthropogenic climate change dogma without at least some level of fact checking to test the veracity of the claims. But that is up to you. We can compare notes after you do your own calculations. Let me know when you have done them.

I am willing to give them a pass (or least a provisional move ahead) if they can clearly show that the basic energy calculations I have made that are required for their scenario outcomes are wrong in any significant way. That is, the calculations are wrong by say 15 orders of magnitude or more.

Average worldwide temperature rises of a couple of degrees (Celsius or Fahrenheit) do not appear to be able to supply enough energy to drive the energy requirements. If they were, then these "real" climate scientists would have been able to demonstrate this long before now. There would be an energy process and pathway available to demonstrate this to all who wanted to see it.

As a number of people here have already shown, the amounts of energy required for some of the existing events are just extraordinary. However, the energy required to drive them is many orders of magnitude short of the energy required to drive the scenario outcomes from the climate change models. This is a problem.

Climate is a multivariate function of a very large number of interacting processes. From the variations of solar output, the orbital position of the planet around the sun, the axial tilt of the planet, position of the moon, cloud cover, global land mass and water distributions, wind processes, storms (from little rainbursts up to the likes of Irma), volcanoes (land based, ocean based, ice based), forest fires (which you are getting right now), ground cover or lack of it, flooding, oceanic algae distribution to a myriad of other interacting effects and variables. To attribute climate change to anthropogenic effects as the main driver is, well, unreasonable without extraordinary evidence. Computer models that don't give reasonable, verifiable predictions are not evidence, no matter how distinguished the climate scientist may be.

[cholantesh]

Quite a lot of anecdota and question begging. Ho-hum.

[oldandtired]

I suppose there is a bit of anecdote, but then I generally find that anthropogenic climate change believers won't take up the energy equation challenge and so show that they are not willing to actually put any effort into the discussion.

Climate change deniers and anthropogenic climate change believers don't appear to have any inclination to do any sort of serious thinking about the subject. Both appear to take a very simplistic political view about the matter and just react along party lines.

Just as your comment shows little effort to even engage in dialogue.

[bruceboughton]

You Americans, thinking you can control everything...

[api]

The energy requirements to influence a hurricane are on the order of the entire output of the US power grid... At a minimum.

[donjoe]

Why not just harvest a hurricane's energy to weaken it?

[SAI_Peregrinus]

The small ones output on the order of magnitude of the annual power consumption of the US in a matter of days. Where would you store the energy? How? Even if you could get wind turbines that could survive it...

[donjoe]

Just been an overall question. There might be a solution no one ever thought about. Why wind turbines? Kites could work as well. There might be a better product not yet invented to solve the problem. It might be even better to start at an earlier point by extracting heat from the oceans to lower temperature and therefore avoid the formation of tropical storms at all. Just some brainstorming ideas :)

[seanmcdirmid]

We could easily do it with a dyson sphere then. Seriously, we still pale in comparison to the energy nature can leverage.

[kodfodrasz]

And even given the power and technology, what would be the effect on global weather?

[learn_more]

How about coating the sea surface with a very thin layer of oil to reduce evaporation?

[nyxtom]

Stop pumping excess heat energy into the atmosphere.

EDIT: While this won't stop them from happening, this is definitely not helping things.

[KGIII]

That's not going to stop hurricanes.

[nyxtom]

It for sure won't, but it definitely isn't helping

[KGIII]

Interestingly, newer models are suggesting that hurricane activity will decrease with global warming.

Basically, as the temperature rises, the colder regions will increase in temperature the most - thus raising the global averages. Because of this lack of heat disparity, less transfer of usable energy, there will be fewer hurricanes and they think they will be weaker in general.

I'm on a tablet, but I can dig out the study (I think), if you want. Google will guide you, otherwise. I was just reading this a month or so back. From a physics viewpoint, it makes sense. Then again, I'm a mathematician and not a climate scientist.

[tomglynch]

They're absolutely crazy.

[tomglynch]

Decrease water temperature over a huge area that's constantly moving?

How many supersonic jets are we talking? 50,000?

Lasers or magnets might work though...

[candiodari]

> Lasers or magnets might work though...

Actually if you can merely slightly resist the heat exchange that will kill these storms just fine. 0.1% difference in heat exchange ? They're weakened to the point of irrelevance. What would happen if we caused an oil spill on purpose ?

We would need to create a circular oil spill where the air is going up (around the eye), in a way that would slightly decrease (slightly is more than enough) the heat exchange and thus the flow of air towards the eye. So an oil spill surrounding the eye of the storm should kill the storm.

Of course the earlier you do this, the more effect it would have. You'd effectively have to do it constantly to avoid having to do it for massive storms.

Alternatively, you could nuke the air above the storm, or otherwise heat it up. That would kill the reason for the funnel to exist (cold air relatively low in the athmosphere on top of warmer water). The advantage I guess is that you could decide to do this and it might kill the funnel in a matter of minutes. We have nearly fallout free nukes nowadays (fallout measured in grams, which when spread out over 1000 sq. km isn't going to do anything).

Of course, this would be climate engineering. If we were willing to do that, we could easily have solved global warming by now. The issue is, what if it goes wrong ? Who will seriously risk doing this, and therefore carrying the responsibility afterwards ... Because we all know, nobody gets blamed for doing nothing, and if you do something and fuck it up ... wow.

[smegel]

How about a really, really big fan?

[iamshyam]

Coz there is no such thing as a hurricane.

[clumsysmurf]

Trump's wall can keep out those hurricanes ...

[sctb]

Could you please comment civilly and substantively, like the guidelines ask, or not at all?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html