Hurricane diversion.

I feel it's my duty to solve the hurricane problem once and forever.
Or at least to handwave in a general manner.

How hard is a hurricane to divert?
I assume that you'r not going to stop it dead unless you get rather
drastic, and either cool the seawater it's over, put a barrier film over
that water, or mechanically stop the rotation.
The first and third seem nearly magical, the second merely an engineering
nightmare.

Steering may be possible.
What if you significantly reduce insolation over one half of the hurricane?
Or would you need to cool the water in half of its track.

I see various numbers on the web for 3-5 billion a year damage to the US
economy from hurricanes.

Cooling the water off wouldn't do much good since once in a while they make
it all the way up to Maine. In 1954 we had 2 of them.


"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...
I feel it's my duty to solve the hurricane problem once and forever.
Or at least to handwave in a general manner.

How hard is a hurricane to divert?
I assume that you'r not going to stop it dead unless you get rather
drastic, and either cool the seawater it's over, put a barrier film over
that water, or mechanically stop the rotation.
The first and third seem nearly magical, the second merely an engineering
nightmare.

Steering may be possible.
What if you significantly reduce insolation over one half of the
hurricane?
Or would you need to cool the water in half of its track.

I see various numbers on the web for 3-5 billion a year damage to the US
economy from hurricanes.



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.756 / Virus Database: 506 - Release Date: 9/8/2004

What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...
I feel it's my duty to solve the hurricane problem once and forever.
Or at least to handwave in a general manner.

How hard is a hurricane to divert?
I assume that you'r not going to stop it dead unless you get rather
drastic, and either cool the seawater it's over, put a barrier film over
that water, or mechanically stop the rotation.
The first and third seem nearly magical, the second merely an engineering
nightmare.

Steering may be possible.
What if you significantly reduce insolation over one half of the
hurricane?
Or would you need to cool the water in half of its track.

I see various numbers on the web for 3-5 billion a year damage to the US
economy from hurricanes.



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.756 / Virus Database: 506 - Release Date: 9/8/2004

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:13:41 -0400, "Rodney Kelp"
wrote:

What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

You effectively spread a lot of radiation.

Actually if anything the heat and updraft would probably dramatically
strengthen the storm, at least temporarily.

Trakar Shaitanaku wrote:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:13:41 -0400, "Rodney Kelp"
wrote:

What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

You effectively spread a lot of radiation.

Actually if anything the heat and updraft would probably dramatically
strengthen the storm, at least temporarily.

I don't think you're factoring in the overpressure. Anywho,
only one way to find out...

In article ,
Rodney Kelp wrote:
What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

You get a radioactive hurricane.

We're talking about a whole different order of magnitude in energy here.
Hydrogen bombs are minor by comparison.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:13:41 -0400, "Rodney Kelp"
wrote:

What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

If you do a google search on "hurricane megaton", this is the first
item that pops up. These topics have been looked at befo

================================================== ======================
An interesting question. But dropping a 10 megaton nuclear device into
the eye of a hurricane would just annoy the hurricane. As this site
http://www.keyshistory.org/35-anatomy1.html
indicates, "(i)t is very difficult to scale down the immense size,
energy and power released from a hurricane - some say equivalent to
400 20-megaton hydrogen bombs." Since your question is (I hope) purely
hypothetical, I think I can feel free to be equally hypothetical.
Hurricanes, like most meteorological phenomena, are driven from the
ground up. A 10 megaton bomb would do little to disrupt a hurricane. I
would think it more likely that, assuming detonation at or near sea
level, it would aggravate the situation by adding yet more heat and
yet more rising moisture, and simply fuel the hurricane. Sort of like
trying to put out a forest fire by dumping gasoline on it. Assuming
the numbers above to yield a total hurricane force of 4 gigatons, I
expect that using nuclear weapons to disrupt or dissipate a
hurricane would be equivalent to curing a hangnail by cutting your arm
off.

Stretching a 100 km square tarpaulin over the ocean surface directly
in front of the advancing hurricane would be much more likely to be
effective. And if it failed, the worst that would happen would be
that people would be picking bits of blue plastic out of their trees
instead of cleaning up plutonium.

--Denni)
================================================== ====================

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:13:41 -0400, "Rodney Kelp"
wrote:

What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

Here's a little more official answer from NOAA
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

Subject: C5c) Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking
them ?

During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one
should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms. Apart
from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach
neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would
fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause
devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a
good idea.

Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not
be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty
with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy
required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a
rate of 5 to 20x1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into
the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a
10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the
1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of
1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.

If we think about mechanical energy, the energy at humanity's disposal
is closer to the storm's, but the task of focusing even half of the
energy on a spot in the middle of a remote ocean would still be
formidable. Brute force interference with hurricanes doesn't seem
promising.

In addition, an explosive, even a nuclear explosive, produces a shock
wave, or pulse of high pressure, that propagates away from the site of
the explosion somewhat faster than the speed of sound. Such an event
doesn't raise the barometric pressure after the shock has passed
because barometric pressure in the atmosphere reflects the weight of
the air above the ground. For normal atmospheric pressure, there are
about ten metric tons (1000 kilograms per ton) of air bearing down on
each square meter of surface. In the strongest hurricanes there are
nine. To change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you
would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside
the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000)
tons for a 20 km radius eye. It's difficult to envision a practical
way of moving that much air around.

Attacking weak tropical waves or depressions before they have a chance
to grow into hurricanes isn't promising either. About 80 of these
disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin, but only about 5
become hurricanes in a typical year. There is no way to tell in
advance which ones will develop. If the energy released in a tropical
disturbance were only 10% of that released in a hurricane, it's still
a lot of power, so that the hurricane police would need to dim the
whole world's lights many times a year.

"Rodney Kelp" wrote in message
...
What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

A bloodshot eye.

Here, Harold Groot wrote:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:13:41 -0400, "Rodney Kelp"
wrote:

What would happen if you dropped a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb in the eye?

[quoting web:]
As this site
http://www.keyshistory.org/35-anatomy1.html
Assuming the numbers above to yield a total hurricane force of 4
gigatons, I expect that using nuclear weapons to disrupt or
dissipate a hurricane would be equivalent to curing a hangnail by
cutting your arm off.

Given the comparison in energies, it's more like trying to cure a
broken arm by trimming the fingernails.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.