Hurricane Sandy is reported to be the largest and worst storm to hit the USA since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Sandy originated from a tropical wave formed in the western Caribbean Sea and soon developed into a tropical storm on October 22, 2012. The storm slowly moved towards the north of Greater Antilles and strengthened to become a hurricane on October 24 alongside Kingston, Jamaica. Sandy then smashed into Cuba on October 25 and moved to Bahamas on October 26. Sandy finally reached the shores of USA on October 29, wreaking havoc in New Jersey and New York.
Besides killing a number of people, destroying many homes and flooding many areas, reports claim that Sandy has caused damages worth several billions of dollars in the US. In addition, the total damage in Jamaica amounted to $55.23 million. In Cuba, the storm left nearly 15,000 people homeless, severe flooding and caused damage worth $2 billion. The losses in Bahamas were estimated to amount to $300 million.
This article looks at how hurricanes are formed and how new engineering methods, utilising simple materials, are being studied to try and calm such storms.
How is a Hurricane Formed?
A hurricane is a violent storm typically identified by thunderstorms spirally moving around a low pressure point resulting in heavy rain accompanied by strong winds. The hurricane is developed and strengthened over the tropical regions, and includes winds blowing at a speed of over 119 km/hr. The storm circulates in an anti-clockwise direction at the surface of the ocean and gets weaker as the height increases, which makes it rotate in a clockwise direction at the top.
The release of heat due to the condensation of water vapor is the main source of energy for the development of a tropical cyclone. Initially, a disturbance is created in the atmosphere leading to the formation of a low pressure region in the atmospheric center. The winds from the surrounding high pressure areas start to move towards the low pressure region. The ocean provides warmth and moisture from its surface to cause the winds rise faster to a great height. The warm air condenses high in the atmosphere by releasing a small amount of energy, which further drives the storm to greater heights. A tropical storm develops into the hurricane under favorable conditions. The storm system rotates upon the Earth’s rotation to provide a cyclonic effect. The cyclone rotates in the counterclockwise direction in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere.
View of Hurricane Sandy from outer space
Historical Methods of Hurricane Control
Attempts to control hurricanes date back to the early 1940s when a research team from General Electric was set up by Dr. Irwin Langmuir to experiment his idea of weakening hurricanes with the help of ice crystals. Hoping that the dry ice would free the energy of the inner warm core of the storm and weaken the storm, the team flew into a hurricane by a Navy plane and dropped a bulk of dry ice into it. Though the efforts were considered to be successful, the storm changed its suddenly following the cloud seeding.
Mook realized a decade later that the change in the storm’s direction was due to upper level steering winds and not because of seeding. Following Langmuir’s experiment, Dr. Robert H. Simpson who developed the Saffir-Simpson Scale concluded that the release of frozen nuclei or silver iodide particles into the hurricane will relax the storm system in early 1960s. Following this, new seeding generators were developed by a team at the Navy Weapons Center, California, to discharge the particles into the storm.
Project Stormfury was started in 1962 when a new team proposed that the conversion of supercooled water present in deep clouds into ice can control the hurricane. After several attempts, the team conducted an experimental test on Hurricane Debby in 1969. The significant success with Hurricane Debby paved the way for several innovative projects and technologies like invention of Hurricane Hunter aircraft in the 1970s. However, in 1980, the Project Stormfury was stopped as the researchers were unable to prove conclusively if the seeding attempts are controlling the storms.
Calming Storms using Old Tires
Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold have filed a patent that offers a solution to control hurricanes by mixing warm oceanic surface water with cold water under the oceanic surface. The man behind this idea is Stephen Salter, a leading marine engineer from Britain who had already proposed a method for suppressing hurricanes by spraying fine seawater droplets into the sky.
Gates along with other state, local and federal government authorities have come forward to fund Salter’s new venture for suppressing hurricanes. According to Salter, conduits would be established between a vessel and an area beyond the thermocline, a line separating warm surface water layer from cool water layer under the ocean surface. Huge plastic tubes made by combining several tires can be used as a heat sink extended deep inside the ocean for storing the heat absorbed by the ocean surface from the sunlight. The warm surface water would be pushed down into the ocean by the action of waves on the ocean surface using non-return valves. As a result, the oceanic surface temperature would be cooled below 26.5°C, which is the critical temperature for the formation of hurricane.
Salter estimated that nearly 150 to 450 tube structures would be required to cool the ocean surface. In addition, these structures should be able to transmit radar signals to prevent collision with other objects. However, Salter insists that there is a crucial need for funds as some more research needs to be carried out by oceanography experts, before this project can be experimented.
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