Just Use Nukes To Kill Hurricanes??? Some Think So...

[southerngale]

Local experts, amateurs offer ideas to stop hurricanes

It seems reasonable to Bob Williams: If a powerful bomb can blow apart a 12-story building, why can't it destroy a hurricane?

"I am not being whimsical. I'd really like to know," said Williams of Boca Raton, a retiree who used to run a wholesale oil distributorship in Ohio.

Every hurricane season, many people wonder why the U.S. government doesn't take action to kill hurricanes, considering they cause damage averaging $5 billion a year in the United States.

The most common suggestion: Nuke 'em. That's followed by the recommendation to use more conventional weapons, such as missiles.

Other ideas include pouring great amounts of ice into the ocean to cut off a storm's heat supply or laying vast sheets of plastic or film over the seas.

Then there are those who think that seeding the clouds around a hurricane's eye to create rain will suffocate it, or that dumping absorbent materials in the core will sap it of strength.

One man suggested the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane research center in Miami use prayer to combat hurricanes.

"When I stopped taking him seriously, he prayed a hurricane would come and get me," said Hugh Willoughby, NOAA's former director of hurricane research.

The fact is, Willoughby says, there is no practical way to stop or weaken a hurricane without serious consequences to nature's complex atmospheric cycles.

That includes nuking the monster storms.

"Terrible idea, a nuclear bomb," said Willoughby, who is researching how to mitigate storm damage for the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University in Miami.

Rather than diffuse the energy of a hurricane, a nuclear bomb could fill it with more hot air. That might strengthen the storm because heat drives the systems, he said. Then, of course, there would be the environmental problem of nuclear fallout.

Nukes aside, military bombs such as those used in the Iraq war wouldn't even dent a hurricane, Willoughby said.

"Explosives work well against buildings because they're rigid," Willoughby said. "But the shock waves would go right through a hurricane's atmosphere."

What about transforming the Sahara Desert, which generates the heat waves that spawn hurricanes, into a lush and considerably cooler tropical jungle?

Nope, Willoughby said. Even if someone spent trillions to make that happen, hurricanes would still crop up -- maybe in greater numbers, he said. That's because a "Sahara jungle" might shift the Atlantic Ocean's heat zones closer to the Caribbean, where the water is already hot.

"To some extent, hurricanes are Mother Nature's way of keeping track of the heat in the atmosphere, an escape valve, if you will," he said.

It's not like NOAA hasn't tried to knock down hurricanes.

Under a project called Storm Fury, the government conducted cloud-seeding experiments from the early 1960s through the 1980s, releasing silver iodide crystals into the eyes of eight tropical systems.

The theory was that if enough rain could be produced to create a new eye wall, it would strangle the old one. Scientists initially thought the program had merit because a few of the storms did weaken. But Willoughby said it was later determined the seeding had no real effect because the hurricanes would have weakened anyway.

Today, NOAA's research division doesn't spend one penny of its $3 million budget on methods to destroy hurricanes, said Frank Marks, the current director of hurricane research.

"Almost all of it is spent on improving forecasts and understanding what makes storms change their direction and their intensity," he said.

Marks said NOAA's research division gets about five inquiries a month about killing hurricanes, enough to address the matter on its Web site, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/.

One company, Dyn-O-Mat, in Jupiter, says it is a year away from halting hurricanes with SK-1000, a substance that looks like snowflakes, feels like baby powder and is able to absorb more than 2,500 times its weight in water.

"Once moisture is introduced anywhere around this product, it is immediately solidified into a gel," said J.D. Dutton, president of the company, which specializes in materials for environmental cleanup.

With enough SK-1000 poured over the eye of a hurricane, the storm structure would get bogged down and weakened, he said. In an experiment two years ago, a cloud dissipated with a much weaker version of the absorbent material.

Dutton couldn't say how much SK-1000 would be needed to stop a storm or how much it would cost, other than to say SK-1000 costs about $5 a pound.

"But I can tell you this: The cost of those storms could be in excess of $40 billion, like Hurricane Andrew," he said.

Taking the absorbent material idea seriously, NOAA experimented with it and found it still wasn't feasible. For instance, the problem with SK-1000 is it would take an enormous amount, "thousands and thousands of tons," Willoughby said.

At this point, NOAA doesn't see any product or invention that could diminish a hurricane. But two ideas might be worth pursuing, Willoughby said.

An alcohol-based substance could be sprayed over expansive areas of the Atlantic, forming a soapy film that would slow evaporation and deprive hurricanes of moisture.

The problem: "It would take supertanker loads of the stuff, even though a layer one molecule thick is all it takes," Willoughby said.

The other way involves pumping cold water from the depths of the Atlantic into the warm Gulf Stream -- using the power of that current to drive the pumps -- between Florida and the Bahamas. That would cool the ocean surface and deprive a storm of its warm-water fuel, he said.

The problem there: Cooling the Gulf Stream could change the planet's climate, potentially sending it into another ice age, Willoughby said.

"I would hate to have to draft the environmental impact statement for that," he said.

More realistically, developers should build stronger homes and residents should plant as many native trees as possible because that roughens the surface of the landscape, which, in turn, grinds down hurricane winds at ground level, he said.

"That's kind of a green solution, as opposed to nuclear weapons," he said. "You might get more branches through roofs, but you don't get any roofs blown off."

source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/weather/hurricane/sfl-scane22jun22,0,7359926.story?coll=sfla-news-hurricane

[vbhoutex]

And the lesson here is very simply put-DON'T MESS WITH MOTHER NATURE!!!

[Guest]

I couldnt have said that better David.........I really wish these kinds of people would give it a rest and let mother nature take her course..................

[JetMaxx]

One of these days, some stupid idiot is probably going to cause a catastrophe by trying to stop hurricanes.....

IMO the weather is God's business....hurricanes and typhoons serve a purpose. They transfer heat from the Equator to Poles. Disrupt that natural balance, and you might create something far deadlier and more destructive than a dozen cat-4/5 hurricanes.

The debate over hurricane modification (that dynomat stuff) reminds me of an episode of "I Dream of Jeannie" from the 1960's -- in which her master Major Anthony Nelson somehow gets Jeannie's magical powers, and immediately sets out to change the world....stop the wars, end droughts, and right the wrongs...

Like Jeannie wisely told him..."You must be very careful with those powers master.....by stopping one war, you might start five others".

Everything in nature is a delicate balance. Just the thought of stopping hurricanes by "cooling the Gulf Stream", "flooding the Sahara Desert", or "nuking canes" gives me cold chills....it literally scares the bejeebers out of me.

I've read in the Bible where in the last days, the weather is going to get totally out of control...massive storms, tidal waves ("roaring of the seas", hailstones weighing 100 lbs....massive earthquakes (as Rev Hal Lindsey says, the entire Earth will shake).

I just wonder if some of these "clueless genuises" tampering with mother nature is what will somehow someday set it all in motion??

Just my .02 cents worth..

PW

[southerngale]

I agree Perry....it's ridiculous to try and stop hurricanes, not to mention stupid! It is God's creation and we can learn from it all we want but we should never try to change it.

[OtherHD]

I'd rather see Dynostorm have their day than see people try to nuke hurricanes. How could anyone be dumb enough to even propose the idea in the first place. Hello!! Nuclear fallout???

[Stormsfury]

A little more in-depth news article from USA Today about Project Stormfury (BTW, I did not come up with the screenname from this)
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurican ... rmfury.htm

Yet another source about Project Stormfury and its predecessor, Project Cirrus ... in which, the dangers of cloud seeding became evident in the attempts to cloud seed a hurricane in 1947...

http://www.hurricaneville.com/project_stormfury.html

I'd rather see Dynostorm have their day than see people try to nuke hurricanes. How could anyone be dumb enough to even propose the idea in the first place. Hello!! Nuclear fallout???

IMO, dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would result in ... a radioactive hurricane ...

[chadtm80]

[chadtm80]

A demonstration
Dyn-O-Mat CEO and inventor Peter Cordani demonstrates the product called SK-1000, which can absorb 2,500 times its weight in water by turning it into gel.
(Sun-Sentinel/Scott Fisher)


Jun. 21, 2003

[Colin]

That's just ridiculous..........let Mother Nature take her course and we're just going to have to deal with it... and uhhh, wouldn't a nuclear bomb cause a huge wave, that would cause lots of damage anyways? I guess they don't think before they come up with these types of ideas...

[ColdFront77]

I understand that it is known fact. Hurricanes and typhoons do serve a purpose. The transfer heat from the equator to poles has to occur. There would just be something else just as destructive or more destructive on this Earth.

[LEWP]

With enough SK-1000 poured over the eye of a hurricane, the storm structure would get bogged down and weakened, he said. In an experiment two years ago, a cloud dissipated with a much weaker version of the absorbent material.

Really weak reporting by the Sun-Sentinel there. They blindly accept the claims of Dyn-o-Mat without bothering to ask the NWS or independent meteorologists.

It was a popcorn thunderstorm and was likely already disappating by the time they dropped their garbage into the storm.

If the Dyn-o-Mat ever actually DOES try a hurricane they're probably going to pick a storm at a peak of a cycle, right before eyewall replacement, a storm likely to weaken some over the next 12 hours on its own.

This is what happened (inadvertently) to Project Stormfury; at the time eyewall replacements were unknown and in hindsight their "successes" were simply seeding a storm that was at peak and likely to decline anyway.

Otherwise, what is hliarious about the old "nuke" idea is that since 1945 thousands of people have sent letters to the NWS with the idea and they all think they're the first person to think of it

The other thing that happens is when some professor fools around scribbling equations on the back of the envelope, like Kerry Emmanuel at MIT and his oil on the water idea, people get the impression that Government aircraft are already filling up with oil and about to implement the plan, and then we get all the sermons about not messing with nature, etc.

The main point isn't that attempting these sorts of things are dangerous, it's that they're pretty much certain not to work.

[WidreMann]

One could change the weather but it would take an immense infrastructure of mirrors and magnifiers in space, moisture pumps and who knows what else. It might be wortwhile in the future, but definitely not now. We could feasibly experiment on Mars or Venus where it really doesn't matter if we screw up the environment. But that's still so far in the future and we have to have reasonable space technology in the first place and lots and lots of money.

[WidreMann]

The transfer heat from the equatore to poles has to occur.

If that could be done by other means, then that alone would prevent the formation of hurricanes and other damaging storms. But, as I said in post above, we got a long way to go and pouring gel into hurricanes or even pumping cold water in the Gulf Stream would be nothing compared to what we would have to do to control the weather.

[grentz7721]

I think there is no way these scientists can stop these storms. That could
be like using WMD to stop these storms. I remember seeing an
episode on TWC'S Atomspheres that they were going to use Vegetable
Oil to weaken a hurricane, which I think it's not true.

[rainstorm]

i hope the weather is never controlled. how boring would that be? i can see it now. sunny and pleasant every single day from now to eternity, with .80 inch of rain once a week, falling from midnight to 6am every sunday morning. everyone posting on wx boards would have mental breakdowns.

[Colin]

Yup.. that's exactly how it would be, rainstorm........I don't know why people would come up with such stupid ideas........just let Mother Nature take her course!

[JetMaxx]

i hope the weather is never controlled. how boring would that be?

everyone posting on wx boards would have mental breakdowns.

That's exactly right Helen....because some of us (99% of us on these forums) enjoy weather changes....get excited by them.

I'll admit a deeply intensifying major hurricane gives me a mega-rush....so does the threat of a tornado outbreak in the southeast U.S. -- my senses seem to go into overdrive. When there's the threat of heavy snow in metro Atlanta, I become 12 years old again; will stay up all night to see the first snowflake. I'll check my rain gauge on the hour when flash flooding is forecast...just to see how much rain has fallen.

I do enjoy the first strong Autumn cold front....the first frosty morning; but no more than the first warm days of Spring. I admit the older I get the LESS I enjoy extremes in heat or cold...but seeing my digital thermometer rise above 98° or below +10° still gets my attention (higher or lower is very unusual in Atlanta).

Sure I enjoy "boring weather" sometimes. October in North Georgia is heaven on earth.....comfortable temps and dry, crystal blue skies accented by the turning leaves. May is nice here too...usually warm, but not too warm...without the sultry humidity we experience in mid-summer. I always relish and enjoy it when it occurs -- but if it were that way every day, it would drive me insane...totally!

PW

[Colin]

Perry, you and me are exactly the same... If a snowstorm is forecasted, I'll be up at 5 AM the next morning... even if heavy rain is forecasted, I'll still get up at 5 AM. I can barely sleep at all when there are major storms in the forecast (snowstorms, rainstorms, etc...)

Just think if weather WAS controlled... no computer models, no debates, no weather boards... but thankfully, I don't think that'll ever happen.

[WidreMann]

If, say, an alien race came to Earth and gave us weather control technology that had no disastrous side effects, would we use it? Or would we say "no" because a few die hard TWC fans, internet message-board posters and others scattered here and there wouldn't have anything fun to watch any more?

As much as I like watching storms, and let me just say that I enjoy it very much - all different types: snow, ice, hurricanes, thunderstorms, extreme cold and heat, whatever - my conscience would say that there would no longer be that innocence in hoping for storms that kill people and do damage, which were previous to the arrival of this new technology completely uncontrollable and therefore no one could be held responsible for them. But after the arrival of this technology, the innocence would be gone and each and everyone of us who prevented the use of this technology would be mass murderers. The right thing to do would be giving up the big storms in favor of people's lives and well-being. There is other stuff in the world besides the weather.