A crew member onboard the International Space Station took this photo of Hurricane Ian on September 26 while orbiting more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earths surface area. At the time, the spaceport station lay over the Caribbean Sea east of Belize, and Hurricane Ian was simply south of Cuba. Throughout the day, it grew from a hurricane to a category-2 typhoon. Credit: NASA
According to scientists, ocean cooling is an effectively difficult solution to mitigate catastrophes.
According to current research, even if we had limitless power to synthetically chill the oceans enough to weaken a cyclone, the advantages would be minimal. The research study, headed by specialists at the University of Miamis (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, discovered that using intervention technology to weaken a typhoon prior to impact is a very inefficient method to mitigate catastrophes.
” The primary result from our research study is that huge quantities of artificially cooled water would be needed for only a modest weakening in typhoon intensity before landfall,” stated the research studys lead author James Hlywiak, a graduate of the UM Rosenstiel School.
” Plus, weakening the strength by limited amounts does not always imply that the likelihood for inland damages and safety dangers would decrease. While any quantity of weakening prior to landfall is an advantage, for these factors it makes more sense to direct focus towards adjustment methods such as reinforcing infrastructure, improving the performance of evacuation treatments, and advancing the science around detection and forecast of impending storms.”
A satellite image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records an active hurricane season which included Hurricanes Katia and Irma and Tropical Storm Jose (from left to right) on September 8, 2017. Credit: NOAA
The scientists integrated air-sea interaction theories with an extremely advanced computer model of the atmosphere to offer valid clinical answers to questions concerning the efficacy of artificially cooling the ocean to weaken typhoons.
They cooled areas of the ocean up to 260,000 km2 in size, which is larger than the state of Oregon and equates to 21,000 cubic kilometers of water, by approximately 2 degrees Celsius in their computer simulations. Even with the largest cooling area, the simulated hurricanes only weakened by 15%. The quantity of energy extracted from the ocean to accomplish this slight reduction is more than 100 times that used in the entire United States in 2019.
” You may believe that the main finding of our short article, that its meaningless to attempt to weaken typhoons, should be apparent,” stated David Nolan, a teacher of atmospheric sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School and senior author of the study. “And yet, various ideas for hurricane modification appear often in popular media and are even sent for patents every few years. Were happy to be able to put something into the peer-reviewed literature that actually addresses this.”
Referral: “Targeted synthetic ocean cooling to compromise tropical cyclones would be futile” by James Hlywiak and David S. Nolan, 19 August 2022, Communications Earth & & Environment.DOI: 10.1038/ s43247-022-00519-1.
The research study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of Miami..
By University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & & Atmospheric Science
October 13, 2022
A team member onboard the International Space Station took this picture of Hurricane Ian on September 26 while orbiting more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earths surface area. At the time, the area station was situated over the Caribbean Sea east of Belize, and Hurricane Ian was just south of Cuba. Even with the biggest cooling area, the simulated cyclones only damaged by 15%.” You may believe that the main finding of our short article, that its pointless to try to weaken hurricanes, must be obvious,” said David Nolan, a professor of climatic sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School and senior author of the study.