Is it possible to weaken a hurricane by bombarding it with some kind of chemical?

Question

This question isn't really a specific question at all. It's more hypothetical. But I wanted to see what some of you smart folks out there think. If you took a chemical substance or solid like dry ice and bombarded a strong hurricane with it, do you think there is a possibility to develop a technology that would prevent severe hurricanes from wreaking destruction?

Answer 1

It is possible in theory. However, to have a significant effect you would have to do it on a scale that is both economically and logistically implausible. Hurricanes are huge and expend a tremendous amount of energy. You have to act on that same scale to be able to have a significant impact. It's just not feasible.

Answer 2

Hurricanes get most of their energy from evaporation, so there have been proposals to create a giant oil slick (using vegetable oil, of course) to prevent evaporation from a giant section of the ocean in the hurricane's path, but this seems impracticable for a number of reasons which I am sure that you can guess.

Seeding hurricanes with dry ice and/or other chemicals has been tried, but produce no noticable effect. To conduct an experiment on a large scale might do more damage to the environment (by pollution) than the hurricane would have if simply left alone.

I believe that a couple of people also proposed building a fleet of ships (or submarines in one proposal) with giant fans (no joke) to divert a hurricane. It might work, but diverting a hurricane simply means that it hits someone else's country instead of yours, which could have political consequences.

At least one person suggested using hydrogen bombs to disrupt a hurricane. Imagine the fallout even if it worked.

All of the anti-hurricane proposals are expensive, most seem to pollute the environment in some way, and probably won't work as intended.

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Interesting that someone gave me a "thumbs down" for saying something truthful that they didn't want to hear. Hum.

Answer 3

This was actually tried in the late 1940s with AgI. Unfortunately, the hurricane then proceeded to veer sharply off it then current course and plow into Georgia in the US. It hasn't been tried since. Frankly, the energy in a hurricane is so vast that you probably couldn't schlep the dry ice up in a plane to do what you planned.

Answer 4

Theoretically you could cool it with dry ice pellets as you eloquently point out and destroy it this way. Of course, dry ice is carbon dioxide, the infamous greenhouse gas that is the cause of global warming, which increases the number and violence of hurricanes. Take last year, for example. Oh wait! There weren't many hurricanes last year.

Answer 5

variations in precipitation, evaporation and air temperature can change a hurricane's strength or redirect it.


these changes could be brought about by beaming microwaves from a satellite to heat water vapor around a storm, or by using a biodegradable oil slick to limit ocean evaporation, the source of a storm's energy.

also...

dispersing a super-absorbent powder, turning a hurricane's moisture into solidified gel would stop it
the powder — a "polymer-based substance" — can make clouds dissipate when sprinkled down.

Answer 6

Hypothetically, if you were able to generate a chemical reaction in which you created a lower pressure field at the surface level (and a large one), then the hurricane wouldn't be able to spin since the spinning is created by the movement of air from a high pressure to low pressure.

Answer 7

It has been done already in the Gulf of Mexico once or twice. A blue gel washed up on the west coast of Florida each time. The gel was similar to the absorbant kind found in diapers. Apparantly, this lowers the temperature of the winds, thusly reducing them noticably. The stuff is called Dyn-o-mat, and here is the article:

http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Hurricanes.htm