Stop pumping excess heat energy into the atmosphere. EDIT: While this won't stop them from happening, this is definitely not helping things.
That's not going to stop hurricanes.
Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
11–20 of 35 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#12Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#13The energy requirements to influence a hurricane are on the order of the entire output of the US power grid... At a minimum.
Why not just harvest a hurricane's energy to weaken it?
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#14They're absolutely crazy.
Decrease water temperature over a huge area that's constantly moving? How many supersonic jets are we talking? 50,000? Lasers or magnets might work though...
> Lasers or magnets might work though...
Actually if you can merely slightly resist the heat exchange that will kill these storms just fine. 0.1% difference in heat exchange ? They're weakened to the point of irrelevance. What would happen if we caused an oil spill on purpose ?
We would need to create a circular oil spill where the air is going up (around the eye), in a way that would slightly decrease (slightly is more than enough) the heat exchange and thus the flow of air towards the eye. So an oil spill surrounding the eye of the storm should kill the storm.
Of course the earlier you do this, the more effect it would have. You'd effectively have to do it constantly to avoid having to do it for massive storms.
Alternatively, you could nuke the air above the storm, or otherwise heat it up. That would kill the reason for the funnel to exist (cold air relatively low in the athmosphere on top of warmer water). The advantage I guess is that you could decide to do this and it might kill the funnel in a matter of minutes. We have nearly fallout free nukes nowadays (fallout measured in grams, which when spread out over 1000 sq. km isn't going to do anything).
Of course, this would be climate engineering. If we were willing to do that, we could easily have solved global warming by now. The issue is, what if it goes wrong ? Who will seriously risk doing this, and therefore carrying the responsibility afterwards ... Because we all know, nobody gets blamed for doing nothing, and if you do something and fuck it up ... wow.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#15https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)
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.
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.
The real solution is to kill all the damn butterflies. /s
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#16Trump's wall can keep out those hurricanes ...
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#17This [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 low 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 lot of energy to disrupt. And that's for Andrew, a small hurricane. Irma has hurricane speed winds out to 75 miles/120 km from the eye, which itself is 23 miles/37 km across.
Good luck.
[1] http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl19...
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#18Coz there is no such thing as a hurricane.
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#19The energy requirements to influence a hurricane are on the order of the entire output of the US power grid... At a minimum.
Why not just harvest a hurricane's energy to weaken it?
The small ones output on the order of magnitude of the annual power consumption of the US in a matter of days. Where would you store the energy? How? Even if you could get wind turbines that could survive it...
Re: Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes?
#20How about coating the sea surface with a very thin layer of oil to reduce evaporation?