
Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes? - aashaykumar92
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&#x27;t been tried or are absolutely crazy?<p>A follow up: so how can we stop hurricanes?
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SAI_Peregrinus
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)](https://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

~~~
irongeek
We are working on it. [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Scientists-say-
decline...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Scientists-say-decline-in-
monarch-butterflies-12181328.php)

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exabrial
I've wondered the same thing about tornados in Kansas, yet we still
wrecklessly mix our warm moist air and cooler dry air with disregard.

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spc476
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 _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...](http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl1992/andrew/public/paal0492.031)

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Hasknewbie
I think it's one of those things where people have difficulties realizing the
_scale_ 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 _Florida_. Think of the logistics it takes to evacuate a whole state
basically overnight, and the _size_ of a threat causing such event: if we
barely have the know-how to _run away_ in time, do you think we would have any
know-how to block something of that magnitude?

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patrick_haply
Should we stop hurricanes, even if we can?

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.

Just doing some cursory researching online [1] [2], it looks like they
basically act as dramatic "flushing" mechanisms:

\- end droughts

\- distribute heat from the equator towards the poles

\- seed dispersal

\- redistribute soil/sediments along coastlines and inlane

[1] [https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-
landfall...](https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-landfall-
benefits-2016)

[2] [http://sciencing.com/positive-effects-
hurricane-4462.html](http://sciencing.com/positive-effects-
hurricane-4462.html)

~~~
gremlinsinc
All these things could have beneficial ecological purposes...IN moderation...
but what happens when they go to extremes ala Climate Change.. when we have 15
cat 5 hurricanes per year..or burn 10 million acres of forest per year...etc..

How much of our current excelling weather patterns are a result of global
warming? All interesting questions...

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dagske
How can we stop hurricanes? First, accept that climate change is real. Second,
act on it.

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.

~~~
oldandtired
Where do I start with this?

I have no issue with climate change being real. Anyone with a modicum of sense
can make those observations? However, your second point requires you to
believe in the "dogma" of only anthropogenic causes for this climate change.
At this point in time, we have no clue (and I mean no clue, irrespective of
what any "real" climate scientist might pontificate) about the extent of
actual causes of this climate change.

There may be (and I'm willing to give a small level anthropogenic causal
effect) some changes that mankind can do to mitigate possible effects of
climate change. They are limited and more in the line of defensive than
anything else.

And before you ask, No I am not a climate scientist. But my experience with
them is that when presented with specific questions related to the energy
requirements of their predictions, they refuse to not only answer the raised
questions, they will not dispute the energy calculations provided as a basis
to the questions.

I have done a series of calculations, in which you can do the same, based on
simple mandatory energy requirements that make the predictions of their models
simply laughable.

My basic view today is that if a "real" climate scientist says anything, I
will take that it that you had better check the silver draw to make sure the
cutlery is still there. At this point in time, I consider it to be more
pseudo-scientific than phrenology and I don't give that any regard at all.

And that is a pity, because we need some verifiable climate model will give
level of predictability. We have none at this time.

~~~
Vanit
Check out oldandtireds infallible series of calculations at
realclimatechange.geocities.com

~~~
oldandtired
Funny, ha ha.

If you actually took the time, about 2 to 3 hours of work and research, you
would quickly see that the various scenarios proposed by these "real" climate
scientists are a load of codswallop. As they say here at times, "Are you
smarter than a fifth grader?" Well a fifth grader can do the calculations with
but a little bit of help. If climate scientists were willing to call out their
colleagues over the various "unreasonable" scenario results then as a group, I
might be more inclined to give them a pass. But they don't, so no.

But so far, I have only had one person on the "anthropogenic" climate change
bandwagon who was willing to give it a go. To his merit and credit, he even
tried to provide a number of research studies to back his claim (he was not a
climate scientist and the papers he referenced are well worth reading). In the
end we agreed to disagree on our interpretations of the data presented. He was
much more clear and critical thinking than the various "real" climate
scientists that I have communicated with over the last two decades.

I have, over the course of nearly forty years, dealt with quite different
computer simulations and models and it is so easy to get them wrong, to the
extent that for some models, no matter what you put in, you appear to get a
reasonable answer out. They're the scary ones, people assume they are right
when in fact they are a load of rubbish.

If you were to actually try to do the energy equations, you would see this for
yourself. But obviously, you more interested in believing the anthropogenic
climate change dogma without at least some level of fact checking to test the
veracity of the claims. But that is up to you. We can compare notes after you
do your own calculations. Let me know when you have done them.

I am willing to give them a pass (or least a provisional move ahead) if they
can clearly show that the basic energy calculations I have made that are
required for their scenario outcomes are wrong in any significant way. That
is, the calculations are wrong by say 15 orders of magnitude or more.

Average worldwide temperature rises of a couple of degrees (Celsius or
Fahrenheit) do not appear to be able to supply enough energy to drive the
energy requirements. If they were, then these "real" climate scientists would
have been able to demonstrate this long before now. There would be an energy
process and pathway available to demonstrate this to all who wanted to see it.

As a number of people here have already shown, the amounts of energy required
for some of the existing events are just extraordinary. However, the energy
required to drive them is many orders of magnitude short of the energy
required to drive the scenario outcomes from the climate change models. This
is a problem.

Climate is a multivariate function of a very large number of interacting
processes. From the variations of solar output, the orbital position of the
planet around the sun, the axial tilt of the planet, position of the moon,
cloud cover, global land mass and water distributions, wind processes, storms
(from little rainbursts up to the likes of Irma), volcanoes (land based, ocean
based, ice based), forest fires (which you are getting right now), ground
cover or lack of it, flooding, oceanic algae distribution to a myriad of other
interacting effects and variables. To attribute climate change to
anthropogenic effects as the main driver is, well, unreasonable without
extraordinary evidence. Computer models that don't give reasonable, verifiable
predictions are not evidence, no matter how distinguished the climate
scientist may be.

~~~
cholantesh
Quite a lot of anecdota and question begging. Ho-hum.

~~~
oldandtired
I suppose there is a bit of anecdote, but then I generally find that
anthropogenic climate change believers won't take up the energy equation
challenge and so show that they are not willing to actually put any effort
into the discussion.

Climate change deniers and anthropogenic climate change believers don't appear
to have any inclination to do any sort of serious thinking about the subject.
Both appear to take a very simplistic political view about the matter and just
react along party lines.

Just as your comment shows little effort to even engage in dialogue.

~~~
cholantesh
Your original comment has nothing meaningful to discuss. You don't present
your data or analysis thereof, so we cannot discuss that. Here you call for
'serious thinking about the subject', but you engage in aggressive
strawmanning (believe in the "dogma" of only anthropogenic causes for this
climate change) and repeat the party line that climate models are all
unreliable (this is a long-debunked falsehood). These are non-starters for
meaningful dialogue.

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bruceboughton
You Americans, thinking you can control everything...

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api
The energy requirements to influence a hurricane are on the order of the
entire output of the US power grid... At a minimum.

~~~
donjoe
Why not just harvest a hurricane's energy to weaken it?

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
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...

~~~
donjoe
Just been an overall question. There might be a solution no one ever thought
about. Why wind turbines? Kites could work as well. There might be a better
product not yet invented to solve the problem. It might be even better to
start at an earlier point by extracting heat from the oceans to lower
temperature and therefore avoid the formation of tropical storms at all. Just
some brainstorming ideas :)

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learn_more
How about coating the sea surface with a very thin layer of oil to reduce
evaporation?

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nyxtom
Stop pumping excess heat energy into the atmosphere.

EDIT: While this won't stop them from happening, this is definitely not
helping things.

~~~
KGIII
That's not going to stop hurricanes.

~~~
nyxtom
It for sure won't, but it definitely isn't helping

~~~
KGIII
Interestingly, newer models are suggesting that hurricane activity will
decrease with global warming.

Basically, as the temperature rises, the colder regions will increase in
temperature the most - thus raising the global averages. Because of this lack
of heat disparity, less transfer of usable energy, there will be fewer
hurricanes and they think they will be weaker in general.

I'm on a tablet, but I can dig out the study (I think), if you want. Google
will guide you, otherwise. I was just reading this a month or so back. From a
physics viewpoint, it makes sense. Then again, I'm a mathematician and not a
climate scientist.

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tomglynch
They're absolutely crazy.

~~~
tomglynch
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...

~~~
candiodari
> 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.

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smegel
How about a really, really big fan?

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iamshyam
Coz there is no such thing as a hurricane.

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clumsysmurf
Trump's wall can keep out those hurricanes ...

~~~
sctb
Could you please comment civilly and substantively, like the guidelines ask,
or not at all?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

