Scientists Say Trying
To Modify Hurricane Behavior Is Futile Because Storms Are Too Strong
September 23, 2005 — By Joseph B. Verrengia, Associated Press
DENVER — It sounds like a great idea:
Let's just blast hurricanes like Rita and Katrina out of the sky before
they hurt more people. Or, at least weaken the storms and steer them
away from cities.
Atmospheric scientists say it's wishful thinking that we could destroy
or even influence something as huge and powerful as a hurricane. They
abandoned such a quest years ago after more than two decades of
inconclusive government-sponsored research.
Private companies have conducted tests on a much smaller scale, but have
made little progress despite initially claiming to erase storm clouds
from the atmosphere.
"It would be like trying to move a car with a pea shooter," said
hydrometeorologist Matthew Kelsch of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder. "The amount of energy involved in a hurricane is
far greater that anything we're going to impart to it."
The federal government's hurricane modification program was called
Project Stormfury. The idea was raised during the Eisenhower
administration after several major storms hit the East Coast in the
mid-1950s, killing 749 people and causing billions in damages.
But it wasn't until 1961 that initial tests were conducted on Hurricane
Esther with a Navy plane releasing silver iodide crystals. Some reports
indicate winds were reduced by 10 percent to 30 percent.
During Stormfury, scientists also seeded hurricanes in 1963, 1969 and
1971 over the open Atlantic Ocean far from land.
Researchers dropped silver iodide, a substance that serves as an
effective ice nuclei, into clouds just outside of the hurricane's
eyewall. The idea was that a new ring of clouds would form around the
artificial ice nuclei. The new clouds were supposed to change rain
patterns and form a new eyewall that would collapse the old one. The
reformed hurricane would spin more slowly and be less dangerous.
Sometimes, the experiments appeared to work. Hurricane Debbie in 1969
was seeded twice over four days by several aircraft. Researchers noted
that its intensity waxed and waned by up to 30 percent.
For cloud seeding to be successful, clouds must contain sufficient
supercooled water that is still liquid even though it is below 32
degrees Fahrenheit (0 Celsius). Raindrops form when the artificial
nuclei and the supercooled water combine.
But scientists also learned that hurricanes contain less supercooled
water than other storm clouds, so seeding was unreliable. And,
hurricanes grow and dissipate all on their own, even forming new walls
of clouds called "concentric eyewall circles."
This made it impossible to determine whether storm reductions were the
result of human intervention. Project Stormfury was abandoned in the
1980s after spending hundreds of millions of dollars.
Other storm modification methods that have been suggested include
cooling the tropical ocean with icebergs and spreading particles or
films over the ocean surface to inhibit storms from evaporating heat
from the sea.
Occasionally, somebody suggests detonating a nuclear weapon to shatter a
storm.
Researchers say hurricanes would dwarf such measures. For example,
Hurricane Rita measures about 400 miles (640 kilometers) across.
According to the center for atmospheric research, the heat energy
released by a hurricane equals 50 to 200 trillion watts or about the
same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb
every 20 minutes.
Source: Associated Press |