Can we prevent or abate hurricanes?

Discord7

The paucity of ocean lightning might be trying to be telling us something about conditions that breed the big storms.

JaredJames

I believe one of the key factors in hurricane formation is latent heat, so to prevent them you would be looking to deal with that - over potentially many hundreds of square miles. Good luck with that.

There are some natural hazards we have to live with and work to minimise damage. Prevention is simply not an option.

I don't see why a lack of lightning has any major impact on the creation of big storms.

Nik_2213

IIRC, there have been mega-engineering suggestions for reducing the probability of hurricanes. Spreading an oil-slick on surface to reduce evaporation was the old favourite, AFAIR. The recent Gulf oil-spill serves to remind of the consequences of such a notion. Enough floating ocean thermal power stations, which brought cool 'deep' water to the surface, may have an effect, but you're talking about studding the Equatorial Atlantic with thousands of platforms. Cloud seeding may have been tried, but doesn't seem to work...

Borek

My idea - speculative as every one - is to "somehow" transfer excess heat from the ocean to the land. From what I understand that's the gradient that fuels hurricanes. Any other approach is just asking for troubles, as it disturbs other equilibria - and it can turn out it produces even worse effects than those we want to prevent.

Discord7

You are right on, but latent heat doesn't have to always return as thermal energy. As vapor mingles with the negative ions plentiful in many places, it acquires significant ionization amongst its own molecules. As ionized vapor chills, the molecules come closer together until, when cold enough, they gravitate onto each other to form liquid water, perhaps an orbiting arrangement as the gas molecules fall below escape velocity from each other. (Something like that, but with apologies to purists, it seems close enough for us to get by on.) However, the mutual gravitation between charged water molecules is opposed by electrostatic repulsion to reduce the condensation temperature to a lower value. In liquid form, the charged water molecules have been pushed closer together, thus storing some of that previous heat energy as electrical potential energy.

In a similar fashion, the freezing point of rainwater gets reduced to as low as about minus forty degrees just about when lightning is ready to fire. That is more storage of electrical energy all over again. Much of all that former thermal energy is thrust into the earth as lightning to depart the scene, never to pester people amidst the storm, essentially cooling the atmosphere from what it would have been.

To combat shortage of lightning, strategic supplementation of the Fair Weather Current; underestimated (I believe) at a measly total of some thousand amps or so, might do wonders.

Am ordered off to the scullery, but will be back with my support of the paucity report.

Evo

Please all, reasonable speculation is fine, but if you are going to state specific facts, remember that you need to back up comments with suitable sources.

JaredJames

Latent heat and its effects on thunderstorms (effectively a kids guide): http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/%28Gh%2...grow/home.rxml

Just covering my backside.

Evo

LOL.

Throwing in interesting background info on some of the tidbits shared is always good.

Example - Rarity of lightning over the ocean.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...01/ast05dec_1/

JaredJames

Had to be done.

I love studying the weather. If it wasn't such a poor job market where I live it's what I'd have loved to do.

DaveC426913

Hurricanes are one of the most powerful - if not the most powerful - forces of nature on planet Earth; the energy they move around is nearly unimaginable. Many orders of magnitude greater than tornados and even atomic bombs, their effect is on the scale of continents and oceans.

I cannot even begin to imagine what trying to stop or lessen them would do to the Earth's climate on a global scale and on a long-term timeline.

Of all the ways we could accidentally bring Earth's ecological engine to a grinding halt, I think this one is right at the top.

I think y'all should be tossed in the slammer for even thinking about it .

JaredJames

I'll second that!

Evo

Actually tornadoes are considered more powerful than hurricanes.

Hurricanes can produce more widespread damage though.

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/faq/faq_tor.php

Hurricanes dissipate quickly once they hit dry land, which is why the most damage is close to the coastline. The thing about hurricanes is that they can skim along the coastline, even moving back out into the ocean to gain more strength and then making landfall again.

Discord7

Here is some lightning mapping. http://geology.com/articles/lightning-map.shtml
You are welcome in retrospect.

Discord7

Increased lightning would seem to do what you recommended. If we get it hitting more ocean water, the trend of negative lightning should find the consequential electron flow seeking out land in its quest for elevation. This is not to claim dispatch of all of the excess energy. The shift of energy to land might be inevitable either way, but sneaking more of it over spread out along the surface might be a little safer.

JaredJames

What about the heat given out by the lightning? It heats the surrounding air to many thousands of degrees so how effective would the losses actually be?

Dotini

Mustn't lightning be a net discharge of energy from the clouds to the surface?

So hurricanes might then be mitigated by lightning rockets launched from small islands in the path of the storm?

Respectfully,
Steve

JaredJames

Lightning rockets are only useful once there is a charge build up capable of generating lightning. They are generally used to guide the course of the lightning so it strikes where they want it to, they don't create it. Usually, the strike will occur either way and you just control where and when.

Not sure which they the charge must go. Can it not go from land to cloud?