Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: myuncle on 06/09/2017 16:26:50
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I don't know if this question has been asked before. But I am surprised they never found solutions to stop a hurricane, considering the economic damages it could prevent. If ice cubes or missiles are too expensive, why not to send submarines underneath the hurrcane, inflate giant balloons (anchored to the submarine). The balloons can float and splash into the waves, but could they survive the wind?
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The required size of the balloons would likely be prohibitive: hurricanes are typically hundreds of miles across. If your goal is to prevent water from evaporating, that comes with a cost: evaporation is a mechanism by which the oceans cool themselves. Reduce evaporation, and the temperature increases over time. This can set you up for worse hurricanes in the future, not to mention the potential damage to marine ecosystems.
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I am reading inthe news that just for Irma relief effort UK pledges £32 million. I can't believe they can't build a megastructure with £32m. They can intervene with a balloon before the hurricane gets too big. Or they could deploy a huge blanket, curved like a tent, one end is floating on the sea, at the other end, drones or aeroplanes or submarines raise the blanket up in the sky, to deflect the wind.
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I am reading inthe news that just for Irma relief effort UK pledges £32 million. I can't believe they can't build a megastructure with £32m. They can intervene with a balloon before the hurricane gets too big. Or they could deploy a huge blanket, curved like a tent, one end is floating on the sea, at the other end, drones or aeroplanes or submarines raise the blanket up in the sky, to deflect the wind.
Are you kidding? You can't even build a car park with 32M these days...
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build a megastructure ... before the hurricane gets too big.
One of the problems with hurricanes is that their path and strength is erratic, and fairly unpredictable.
So it's practically impossible to build a megastructure in the path of a hurricane.
And building a megastructure on the edges of a hurricane will result in certain failure.
But it will be in the wrong location for the next hurricane.
I have to say that this is quite impractical with techniques we have today.
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There are a number of factors which influence the development of a hurricane and if you want to prevent or reduce the strength you would need to disrupt at least one of them, the most important ones are:
- warm (27C or above) ocean to provide a source of warm moist air.
- winds near the ocean surface blowing from different directions converging and causing air to rise and storm clouds to form
- low wind shear - winds which do not vary greatly with height - allows the storm clouds to rise vertically to high levels
- sufficient distance from the equator to provide spin or twist - due to Coriolis effect.
Can't do anything about the last one and the amount of energy required to affect the other 3 is way beyond anything we have access to. Take for example the blanket idea, if you've ever tried to hold down a tent or sail in a gale you will know that wind power if unbelievably strong and the force it exerts goes up as square of wind speed. You would need thousands of ships and aircraft to hold it even if you could find material strong enough to hold together.
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Kind of like that " Or they could deploy a huge blanket, curved like a tent, one end is floating on the sea, at the other end, drones or aeroplanes or submarines raise the blanket up in the sky, to deflect the wind."
And I'm not alone my man, Jules Verne would like it too, and the balloon