Posted on 09/01/2017 9:52:13 AM PDT by EBH
Scientists have been trying to come up with ways to weaken hurricanes since the 1940s. Nothing that has been tried so far has worked, but that hasn't stopped a virtual cottage industry of researchers from hatching the next big, bold proposal.
The latest idea, published in the August issue of the journal Atmospheric Science Letters, comes at it from a new angle and at an opportune moment: A study published last week in the National Academy of Sciences concluded that large, damaging hurricanes will happen with greater frequency as global temperatures climb.
Early efforts at hurricane modification involved "seeding" clouds in the eye of an established hurricane in an attempt to disrupt its core. The new plan calls for seeding low marine stratocumulus clouds in areas where hurricanes form—before they form.
The idea is that droplets of seawater sprayed into the air by unmanned vessels would rise up into the atmosphere and increase the brightness of the clouds. The brighter marine clouds would then reflect more sunlight back into space.
With less of the sun's energy reaching the ocean, sea-surface temperatures would drop by several degrees. Since hurricanes gather strength from warm ocean waters, the scientists say the intensity of hurricanes could be reduced by one or two categories.
Two of the cloud-seeding study's authors, Alan Gadian, a senior research lecturer in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds in England, and John Latham, a cloud physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the seeding would take place over an area a couple hundred of kilometers wide. They said the plan could be feasible within a few years.
But the viability of the seeding plan is by no means certain. Hurricane experts say implementing it would involve huge economic, logistic and scientific challenges. It would also be controversial, because it involves geoengineering, where man tries to alter the atmosphere on a mammoth scale to eliminate or reduce potential negative impacts on people or property. Cloud brightening is also among the geoengineering methods proposed for combating rising global air temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.
As with any proposed geoengineering solution to climate change, cloud-seeding faces two big barriers: public perception and politics.
"There's more to this than a scientific idea," said Frank Marks, director of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division. "There has to be political will to do this across the board. That's daunting, to say the least."
Resolving Details
Among the many details to be resolved in the new proposal is determining just what areas would be best for seeding.
"We have yet to establish which regions could produce deleterious consequences, and which would not," Gadian and Latham said in an email response to questions about their paper.
That's no minor sticking point.
"If you get it wrong and mess with the climate, it could be worse than hurricanes," said Hugh Willoughby, a research professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Florida International University who has been studying hurricane modification proposals for decades.
"I try to keep an open mind, in spite of being a curmudgeon," he said. "But it's kind of naive to think it would work. I've seen a lot of these ideas."
Willoughby wrote the paper that killed off Project StormFury, the world's longest-running experiment in hurricane modification by the U.S. Navy and Department of Commerce in the 1960s through early '80s. Scientists thought that by seeding with silver iodide just outside a hurricane's eye wall, they could expand the storm's eye and thus weaken it. Willoughby showed, through the study of subsequent, unseeded hurricanes, that the changes observed in the seeded storms would have occurred anyway, and that the theory was deeply flawed to begin with.
The concept of making clouds brighter through seeding is plausible, Willoughby said, but he thinks it's impractical and unlikely to accomplish the goal of weakening hurricanes.
The ocean warms a little each day starting in late spring and continuing through summer, he said. Hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, but several tropical storms formed in May this year.
"Brightening clouds around a hurricane can't help if the ocean is already warmed up," he said. "You would want to keep the tropical ocean cool. You would need to start in May, and you would need to be out there every day."
Plus, he said, clouds over the tropical ocean are widely scattered and move around. "There's not enough cloud cover to do it."
Latham, who is also an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Manchester in England, said he doesn't know precisely how much it would cost to build the fleet of unmanned vessels that would be used to disperse the spray in the hurricane-producing areas. He thinks it would probably be in the millions, a cost he said would be "trivial" compared with the cost of repairing damage done by hurricanes.
Other large-scale, geoengineering proposals to mitigate hurricanes have price tags estimated in the multiple billions. Those ideas include coating a giant swath of the ocean with a chemical or oily film that would limit evaporation, or using a fleet of ships to pump up cold waters from ocean depths to cool the surface. The cold-water suggestion is being pushed by billionaire Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder.
"The economics of the problem would really ramp up quickly," said Marks, director of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division. "It's in the execution with these type of proposals. We have heard all sorts of things that sound reasonable on the surface, until you start to look at the details. Then they start to spiral out of control."
Many Potential Issues
Beyond the economics, any geoengineering project raises complex legal, political and sociological issues.
In the 1940s, General Electric and the U.S. military, in an experiment called Project Cirrus, attempted to weaken hurricanes that weren't headed for landfall by seeding them with dry ice. In October 1947, the researchers seeded a storm off the northern coast of Florida that they thought was turning out to sea—but instead it veered westward and hit Georgia
"Needless to say, the Georgians weren't happy," Willoughby said. "That kind of poisoned the well for seeding for a while."
Even a successful hurricane mitigation plan, if one were developed, could sour quickly in the public eye.
"You could envision a scenario where you seeded a storm when it was a Category 3," Willoughby said. "Maybe it would have become a Category 5, but it ends up a 4 and hits some place. There would still be a public relations problem."
The potential legal liability could be enormous if there were unintended consequences. Imagine the furor if it could be shown that an operation spared or limited storm damage in one location while exacerbating it in another.
Then there's the issue of potentially robbing a region of needed rainfall. The StormFury Project was accused of stealing rain from Mexico. If Hurricane Isaac had been weakened before it hit the Gulf Coast in late August, it may have done less to ease the drought in the Midwest.
"I've been kind of a hurricane proponent," said Marks. "In many years, hurricanes bring drought relief."
Gadian and Latham said the cloud-brightening operation could cause the loss of rainfall in the Amazon or other regions, but they think this problem could be avoided if areas to be seeded were selected judiciously. They said more computations are needed to determine exactly where to seed.
Enormous Scale
Marks is frequently presented with proposals to try X or Y to weaken hurricanes. Most of the time, he said, there is little understanding of the scale involved.
"When I see people propose ideas to do mitigation, it's almost comical," he said. "An Air Force general called me before Katrina and said, 'I've got the bombs to drop. Where do I go?'"
Even the power of a nuclear bomb is minuscule compared with the forces involved in a hurricane, he said. Bombs would have had little impact.
Beyond the issue of scale, Marks believes scientists don't understand enough about the complex interplay between ocean and atmosphere to attempt mitigation. Most proposals for hurricane alteration look at only one piece of the puzzle, such as sea-surface temperatures, he said. A more thorough, systematic approach is needed.
"I don't think we know enough about the natural balance, even after studying it for 50 years at NOAA," he said. "There is much to figure out, and it [mitigation] is a little beyond our ability at present.
"I guess I have more respect for how complicated the process is. It's pretty humbling, considering how little we know."
If all the scientific, logistic and economic issues could be settled, then politics would come into play.
"Say their idea worked," Marks said. "Who's going to say do it? The atmosphere is global."
Gadian and Latham said an international body would need to be created to handle oversight of hurricane modification efforts.
But given the inability of nations to unite to combat climate change through a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the odds of reaching an international agreement on a geoengineering project with possible global implications look slim, Marks said.
Aside from the political considerations, there could be a perception problem to overcome. Hurricane modifiers could be accused by some of "playing God," because they would be altering what nature had intended to happen, and because tens of millions of people could be affected.
"Our answer is that we have been playing God for 200 years by burning fossil fuels, and a lot of damage has been done," Gadian and Latham said. "What we and others are trying to do vis-a-vis global climate change and hurricane weakening is to ameliorate these irresponsible changes.
"Our efforts are restorative. God does not seem to be inclined to intercede."
The mice all agreed, that hanging a bell about the neck of the cat, to warn all of the approach of the cat, was a good idea. Only problem, who was going to hang the bell about the neck of the cat?
Understatement of the year.
That was my first reaction on reading the headline: come on, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has been tried. This time it’s an armada of robot fire boats shooting salt water into the atmosphere. The robot fire boat companies will clean up on the taxpayer’s dime. I’m buying stock.
“Both Sides Now”
Judy Collins 1968
Bows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feathered canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
When every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way
But now it’s just another show
You leave ‘em laughing when you go
And if you care don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away
I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all
Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say “I love you” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way
But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost but something’s gained
In living every day
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
ROTFL. I got an email from a woman who is a total tin-foil hat about everything and the link included
““Weather wars” theorists claim Hurricane Harvey was engineered, “steered” toward Houston as a “weather terrorism” weapon”
enjoy!
And I still worry about messing with mother nature.
Has anyone checked to see if these studies are plagiarized? How many studies can there be that "concluded that large, damaging hurricanes will happen with greater frequency as global temperature climb."? They have created their own empirical evidence that disproves their findings, REPEATEDLY. According to their own data, over the past 30 years, the number and intensity of hurricanes have decreased AND the global temperatures have climbed.
Now, what was this article about?
Understatement of the year.
"Our answer is that we have been playing God for 200 years by burning fossil fuels, and a lot of damage has been done," Gadian and Latham said. "What we and others are trying to do vis-a-vis global climate change and hurricane weakening is to ameliorate these irresponsible changes.
"Our efforts are restorative. God does not seem to be inclined to intercede."
Translation: We are taking up the slack where God has dropped the ball! We don't need no stinkin' understanding of the scale involved...or of anything else!"
3 big barriers. They should include science as one of the big barriers. It seems to be the root cause of the other two "big barriers."
It’s an ill wind that cries wolf in a crowded hurricane.
...last week in the National Academy of Sciences concluded that large, damaging hurricanes will happen with greater frequency as global temperatures climb.
Unmitigated Bullshit!!
It will never even be tried because of the liability issues.
Let’s say they were to try it on Hurricane Irma now entering the Gulf. The hurricane subsequently hits the Texas coast causing billions in damage. Everyone involved will be sued into bankruptcy.
Did it reduce, increase or have utterly no effect whatsoever on the strength of the storm? Did it cause the storm to change direction and hit someone that would not have otherwise been hit (at the same time saving someone that would have otherwise been hit)? There is no way to know for sure, so I can guarantee that swarms of plaintiffs’ lawyers will say it increased the force of the hurricane and/or caused it to hit people that would not have otherwise been hit.
Or they’ve miscalculated, and will create a MONSTER MEGA HURRICANE.
I’ve always wondered about this idea. What if hurricanes and other weather patterns are a natural release mechanism for energy built up in the atmosphere. To a degree they can be interpreted as such since they are a windflow from high to low pressure and a temperature flow from warm to cold.
If we ‘seed’ to prevent the hurricane formations what happens to all the pent up energy? It isn’t just going to disappear. It’ll move somewhere else or build up until it finally releases in a catastrophic manner.
Oh look we’ve seeded and prevented hurricanes for 5 years aren’t we so smart. Wait, what? It isn’t working this time? It’s building to a Category 10???? There is no category 10....oh you just had to come up with it because we’ve never seen one like this before...Lord help us all....we’ve brought our own destruction....
At least that’s how I envision it....
whole thing is so absurd...the power, energy and size of these storms ..the mere suggestion that man can alter these in any way in madness. Man, talk about arrogance..geez. When the science of studying these storms wasn’t politicized years ago, the belief was hurricanes were needed, sort of like a relief valve, to transfer heat and energy away from the equator up into the northern latitudes. This was the reason they occurred late in summer and early fall. Some just happen to hit land and where dumb asses insist on building on coastlines so they can have a “heavenly view” when they wake up. The crazy talk of more cat 4 and 5 storms from the climate kooks really annoys me..talk of the sea temps increasing..when actually, the temps have little to do with powerful cat 4 and 5 hurricanes. Upper level shear is what produces the powerful hurricanes. Doesn’t matter if the SST is 500 degrees...if the storm doesn’t have the proper exhaust you’re not getting any hurricane..let alone cat 5’s.
you’re exactly right...its obvious these storms are to transfer the heat build up along the equator...the ones that drift off into the open seas to the northern lats is actually doing its job...some turn late and hit land, wheres fools insist on living on the coastlines...New Orleans cracks me up...if they ever get a cat 5 at just the right angle..up the Mississippi River...forget about it...there wont be a trace of that city left...swept out to sea, never to be seen again.
You might be able to fool Mother Nature for a short while, but Father Time WILL catch up with you.
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