Artificial ocean cooling to weaken hurricanes is futile, study finds
Renaud de RICHTER
Artificial ocean cooling to weaken hurricanes is futile, study finds
September 10, 2022
by Annie Reisewitz, University of Miami
A satellite image from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration captures an active hurricane season which
included Hurricanes Katia and Irma and Tropical Storm Jose (from left to
right) on September 8, 2017. Credit: NOAA
A new study found that even if we did have the infinite power to artificially cool enough of the oceans to weaken a hurricane, the benefits would be minimal. The study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science showed that the energy alone that is needed to use intervention technology to weaken a hurricane before landfall makes it a highly inefficient solution to mitigate disasters.
"The main result from our study is that massive amounts of artificially cooled water would be needed for only a modest weakening in hurricane intensity before landfall," said the study's lead author James Hlywiak, a graduate of the UM Rosenstiel School. "Plus, weakening the intensity by marginal amounts doesn't necessarily mean that the likelihood for inland damages and safety risks would decrease as well. While any amount of weakening before landfall is a good thing, for these reasons it makes more sense to direct focus towards adaptation strategies such as reinforcing infrastructure, improving the efficiency of evacuation procedures, and advancing the science around detection and prediction of impending storms."
To scientifically answer questions about the effectiveness of artificially cooling the ocean to weaken hurricanes, the authors used a combination of air-sea interaction theories and a highly sophisticated computer model of the atmosphere.
In their computer simulations, they cooled areas of the ocean up to 260,000 km2 in size—larger than the state of Oregon and equating to 21,000 cubic kilometers of water—by up to 2 degrees Celsius. Even with the largest area of cooling, the simulated hurricanes weakened by only 15 percent. The amount of energy extracted from the ocean to achieve this small reduction is equivalent to more than 100 times the amount consumed across the entire United States in 2019 alone.
"You might think that the main finding of our article, that it's pointless to try to weaken hurricanes, should be obvious," said David Nolan, a professor 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 submitted for patents every few years. We're happy to be able to put something into the peer-reviewed literature that actually addresses this."
The study, titled "Targeted Ocean Cooling to Weaken Tropical Cyclones Would Be Futile," was published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
Robert Tulip
Renaud
The “futile” headline comes from the title of the attached journal article. Their use of the term ‘futile’ is quite misleading.
Stephen Salter commented to the geoengineering list about this on 3 September, sending the authors his article on how Marine Cloud Brightening could mitigate hurricane formation.
But their article is not about that at all. They state in the article that ““We focus on targeting individual weather events - i.e., weather modification - rather than climate modification.”
That means the ‘futility’ is solely about trying to reduce the force of a formed hurricane by cooling the water in front of it.
They cite no evidence that anyone advocates that. It is therefore a fallacious strawman argument when applied more broadly to climate modification.
They have nothing to say about the merits of using Marine Cloud Brightening to cool ocean waters where hurricanes form.
Even so, they conclude with a false generalisation, stating “we strongly advise that resources directed towards ineffective geoengineering techniques would be better spent on improved forecasting, more resilient infrastructure, and directed advances in observational technologies.”
As far as I am aware, no resources are currently proposed to be “directed towards ineffective geoengineering techniques” that involve directly mitigating the force of formed hurricanes.
It would be a great shame, but not a great surprise, if this article were used to promote baseless and malicious criticisms of the potential of marine cloud brightening to mitigate storm intensity.
Regards
Robert Tulip
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Alan Gadian
On 13 Sep 2022, at 13:50, 'Robert Tulip' via geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/086d01d8c76f%245e4f9240%241aeeb6c0%24%40yahoo.com.au.