Supersonic Jets Breaking Up Hurricanes: Possibilities

[lvlastermind]

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-03/hurricane-busters

A Category 4 hurricane approaches New Orleans, yet “When the Saints Go Marching In” continues to spill out of clubs on Bourbon Street. No one’s worried, because two F4 Phantom fighter jets have just taken off from the nearby Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base to kill the storm before it hits land...

 

[sylas]

On the face of it, it looks absurd. And frankly, that's what I am betting.

However, who knows. A hurricane dissipates one heck of a lot of energy, but so too does ordinary convection on a clear day. In principle I can't fault the idea that you might be able to break up the conditions of formation early on.

So if you want more background:

• Here's a report of the patent application in New Scientist: Invention: Supersonic hurricane neutraliser, New Scientist website, written 1 Dec 2008 by Justin Mullins.
• Here's the actual patent application itself.
• The main author, Arkady I. Leonov, is a Professor of Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron, Ohio. The relevant aspect of his background is that he has legitimate expertise in fluid flow; albeit mostly applied in smaller scales. Here's his http://www2.uakron.edu/cpspe/dpe/web/leonov.php [Broken] at the Uni.
• He's written a couple of papers on hurricanes for arxiv; which is a repository of papers without formal peer review. There's lots of good stuff there, but inclusion is no assurance of quality. The paper looks sensible at first glance, and barely touches on methods for actually manipulating hurricanes. See Aerodynamic Models for Hurricanes IV. On the hurricane genesis and maturing, arXiv:0812.3180v1 Dec 2008.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I agree, it certainly sounds absurd. It's swatting an elephant with a flyswatter.

But I also can't dismiss this one out of hand, especially the earlier the intervention.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Since we don't have any peer-reviewed references, and because this is not a claim of an unexplained phenomenon, I am locking the thread to prevent misguided discussions. If anyone has a journal reference for this, send me a pm and we can move the discusison to Earth Sciences. Until then, this falls into the category of an interesting but unsubstantiated claim.