Plan To Tame Hurricanes

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Space Age Plan To Tame

The Might Of Hurricanes

By Robin McKie

Science Editor

The Observer - UK

10-10-4

 

Scientists are developing techniques aimed at taming the power of

the world's most devastating storms. The project, backed by funds

from Nasa, would involve seeding clouds, coating seas with

biodegradable 'slicks' and even beaming microwave radiation from

orbiting power stations to slow or even halt hurricanes.

 

Controlling these great, rolling tempests - known as hurricanes in

the Atlantic, typhoons in the western Pacific and cyclones in the

eastern Pacific - is now considered an urgent priority. Last month

Hurricane Ivan killed more than 70 people and destroyed thousands of

homes, miles of roads, swaths of vegetation and scores of hotels as

it swept over Grenada, Jamaica, Tobago, the Cayman Islands, the

Dominican Republic, Haiti and finally Cuba. Three similar recent

storms caused the same kind of devastation, and meteorologists

predict the next two decades will see increases in numbers and

severity of hurricanes. Global warming is likely to worsen the

problem.

 

'Nothing stands in the way of hurricanes,' says Ross Hoffman, in the

current issue of Scientific American. 'But must these fearful forces

be forever beyond our control?' The answer is 'no', he adds, for one

day they could be controlled thanks to developments in computing,

satellite technology and material sciences.

 

Backed by Nasa funds, his team of scientists at Atmospheric and

Environmental Research, a research and development consulting firm,

have created computer simulations of past hurricanes, including

Hurricane Iniki which caused enormous damage to the Hawaiian island

Kauai in 1992, and Hurricane Andrew, which devastated south Florida

in the same year. To their surprise they found that by making only

relatively small changes to temperatures and other meteorological

variables they could induce major alterations in its path and

behaviour. Slight tinkering sent Iniki on a route that missed Kauai,

for example. 'The question is: how can such perturbations be

achieved?' asks Hoffman.

 

The team has proposed several answers. One is to coat the ocean in

front of a hurricane with a biodegradable oil which would slow the

evaporation of water from the sea surface, depriving the developing

storm of its sustenance. Another technique is to seed the eyes of

hurricanes with silver iodide crystals, speeding formation of ice

from water vapour. Spread by aircraft, these seed clouds could cause

hurricanes to dissipate, although the group acknowledges that early

tests have been only partially successful.

 

The ultimate technique would be the construction of a flotilla of

orbiting power stations that would collect the Sun's rays and beam

them to Earth as microwave radiation. These satellites are

considered a promising, non-polluting energy source for the future,

but could also be used to heat the sea and air around hurricanes,

altering their paths and dissipating their energy.

 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather

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