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?<p>A follow up: so how can we stop hurricanes?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>The real solution is to kill all the damn butterflies. /s
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 <i>low</i> 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 <i>lot</i> of energy to disrupt. And that's for Andrew, a <i>small</i> hurricane. Irma has hurricane speed winds out to 75 miles/120 km from the eye, which itself is 23 miles/37 km across.<p>Good luck.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl1992/andrew/public/paal0492.031" rel="nofollow">http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl19...</a>
I think it's one of those things where people have difficulties realizing the <i>scale</i> 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 <i>Florida</i>. Think of the logistics it takes to evacuate a whole state basically overnight, and the <i>size</i> of a threat causing such event: if we barely have the know-how to <i>run away</i> in time, do you think we would have any know-how to block something of that magnitude?
Should we stop hurricanes, even if we can?<p>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.<p>Just doing some cursory researching online [1] [2], it looks like they basically act as dramatic "flushing" mechanisms:<p>- end droughts<p>- distribute heat from the equator towards the poles<p>- seed dispersal<p>- redistribute soil/sediments along coastlines and inlane<p>[1] <a href="https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-landfall-benefits-2016" rel="nofollow">https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-landfall...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://sciencing.com/positive-effects-hurricane-4462.html" rel="nofollow">http://sciencing.com/positive-effects-hurricane-4462.html</a>
How can we stop hurricanes? First, accept that climate change is real. Second, act on it.<p>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.