Chasing Could End

[Andrew Khan]

I have read about a certain thing in books, about destroying the vortex of a tornado by using explosive, or microwave beams to disrupt the pressue and cold air circulation, or something. They say it will be test in the next 10 years.

The websites are http://www.tornadofighters.com/home.html

and

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_..._86/ai_73533123

What do you gusy think about this, do youi think it could work? They say they would to be like a fire fighter, like when ever theirs a tornado go, and stop it. Take a good look at those articles, and you'll see. Do you see any success in this?

Personally, I don't know if I'm all for it, it might save people but, I do not think we should mess with mother nature, she makes the choices, not us.

 

[Ben Cotton]

I think I speak for everyone when I say "don't waste valuable though processes on this garbage". Hell, the physicist in the 2nd article doesn't even understand the concept of an inversion layer. It's obvious he has no knowledge of the atmosphere. Stupid people piss me off.

In a thunderstorm, warm, humid air near the ground rises. As the air moves upward, it starts to spiral. At a certain point high above the ground, the warm air runs into a layer of colder, heavier air. That cold layer acts as a barricade, forcing the spinning air back down again to form a mesocyclone.

 

[Robert Dewey]

I think I speak for everyone when I say "don't waste valuable though processes on this garbage". Hell, the physicist in the 2nd article doesn't even understand the concept of an inversion layer. It's obvious he has no knowledge of the atmosphere. Stupid people piss me off.

In a thunderstorm, warm, humid air near the ground rises. As the air moves upward, it starts to spiral. At a certain point high above the ground, the warm air runs into a layer of colder, heavier air. That cold layer acts as a barricade, forcing the spinning air back down again to form a mesocyclone.

I agree...

There would be several major hurdles to jump over for something like this to happen. First, you would have environmentalists which would lobby, and have a significant impact. Then, as Nick said, you are talking about using methods which are more harmful than the actual tornado itself. Firing missles and radiation is never a good thing, especially when the supercell is long lived and will just reproduce another tornado within minutes.

One would have to alter then ENTIRE storm, not just the funnel cloud. These crackpots are trying to get rid of the result, rather than the cause - which gets you no where.

 

[Andrew Khan]

HAHA! I so aggree, and not to mention all of the tax payers, who will have to be paying money into the huge budget this will cost, lol. To be honest I'm not sure what an inversion layer is, lol, but if I don't know what something is I don't talk like I do, I say, "You know what I'm not sure about that, I'll have to look up on that and read", and I damn people who proclaim to be something they aren't. This moron was just someone who moved to texas and got something destroyed and said, "I'LL STOP THEM!", lol. But, I think their are also some ethical issues involved here to, it's mama nature, and she'll do what she wants. I think the physist...did I spell that right?, wants to block the cold air layer from hitting the warm air layer, so that no rotation can form but I don't know if this is possible, or even if he knew what he was talking about, what do you think?

 

[Glen Romine]

This stuff is all pretty old. If you dig back through some of the older ST threads, I think even from last spring, you'll find an extended discussion about these projects - well the tornado fighters I recall in particular. I think it's just another friendly reminder that creating web pages is easy, and you shouldn't believe everything you read on the web.

Glen

 

[Andrew Khan]

Alright. Another thing that makes me a little upset is that the website says that the SPC and the NWS isn''t doing anything to help people, which is extremely false.

 

[Ben Cotton]

So I decided to finish reading the article, and because I'm feeling particularly bitter at the moment, I've decided to expand upon my previous comments.

Bernard Eastlund has a score to settle. Back in 1982, Eastlund had just moved to Houston, Texas, when a tornado hit his property. The tornado didn't hurt him or his house, but it mowed down all his pine trees. "That was scary enough" he said.

Why is it that people who come up with stuff are almost invariably victims of tornadoes? How come the people who spend years studying the beasts don't dream up these ideas? Oh that's right, resentment breeds idiocy.

Eastlund believes he can prevent tornadoes by halting the formation of mesocyclones--huge, swirling columns of air that occur during thunderstorms. In a thunderstorm, warm, humid air near the ground rises. As the air moves upward, it starts to spiral. At a certain point high above the ground, the warm air runs into a layer of colder, heavier air. That cold layer acts as a barricade, forcing the spinning air back down again to form a mesocyclone. If the mesocyclone touches the ground, it becomes a more tightly coiled funnel of spinning air, or a tornado, and mayhem may ensue.

If you believe this, quit storm chasing and resign your ST membership now. Like Scott quipped (with his rapier-like wit): "and bowl-shaped racetracks spawn tornadoes." Let's continue on and see how dumb this really is.

Mesocyclones might be stopped, says Eastlund, by busting the cold air barricade with microwave radiation--the same electromagnetic waves you use to nuke popcorn in a microwave oven. According to Eastlund's calculations, raindrops in the cold barricade would absorb the microwaves and release as much as a billion watts of energy. That energy would heat the surrounding cold air and smash the cold barrier the way dynamite demolishes a concrete wall. With no barrier in place, warm, spinning air would continue rising instead of being forced back down to form mesocyclones and tornadoes.

Except that by warming the air, it would rise faster, increasing the strength of the storm. This guy needs to look at a skew-t. Cold air aloft doesn't prevent updrafts, warm air does.

How on Earth could a microwave beam nuke a mass of air? Not from Earth, but from space. Eastlund proposes having Earth-orbiting satellites do the job. Solar panels on the satellites would collect energy from the sun and convert it to microwave beams. Eastlund calls his proposed satellites Thunderstorm Solar Power Satellites (TSPS).

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) toyed with a similar idea in the 1960s as a way of creating an alternate energy source for Earth. NASA planned to have microwaves beamed down to receiving stations on Earth, where the beams would be converted to electricity.

Hmm. They haven't tried it since the 1960s...maybe it didn't work?

Eastlund first came up with his idea for blasting tornadoes during the mid1980s while working for an oil exploration company in Alaska. At the time, the U.S. government was exploring a plan called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to shield the country from nuclear attack.

One idea for SDI involved opening a missileproof umbrella of high-energy electrons over the United States. Eastlund suggested erecting large microwave antennas, powered by Alaska's huge natural gas reservoir, that would fire microwaves into the ionosphere. The ionosphere is a layer of the upper atmosphere full of charged particles. The microwaves and the ionosphere's charged particles would interact and release hordes of electrons. Those electrons, attracted by Earth's magnetic field, would form a missileproof dome over the United States.

Again with the didn't work?

The SDI plan never went further than the development stage.

Q.E.D.

Eastlund teamed up with colleagues at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms

.Bull. If I get in my car and follow the DOW around the plains, can I claim I teamed up with Josh Wurman? I'd bet good money that CAPS wasn't going along with this half-baked (half-nuked?) idea as the article implies.

Sometime in the next decade, Eastlund hopes to test his theory. To do that, he says, he will need a sophisticated Doppler radar system that can look downward from a satellite and locate mesocyclones within thunderclouds. He will also need access to instruments on board the International Space Station to create minibursts of microwaves to test whether they have enough power to heat even the slightest amount of air in a storm cloud.

Okay, so let's think about this. A WSR-88D has a pretty wide beam width at 120nm...GOES-12 is at 35775km (according to Orbitron). How big of an antenna would we need to resolve a mesocyclone on the surface? Would the moon be big enough? And what about the poor people who happen to be near an errant microwave beam? Do they get crispied?

Some scientists are skeptical of Eastlund's idea.

If by some you mean all, then yes.

Eastlund is optimistic, though. He hopes that by the time he's ready to start running experiments, a new generation of scientists and engineers will be helping him out. Already, he's heard from one interested middle school student. Eastlund helped the boy create a mini-mockup of his satellite system, "One of my proudest moments," said Eastlund, "was [when] the 11-year-old [got] an A+ on his science project."

He hopes that this new generation will be stupid enough to go along with him. Sure, he can convince an 11 year-old. Just wait til the 11 year-old starts studying the atmosphere. Ooops. Wait another generation I guess.

In conclusion, is this guy a degreed physicist or just some guy who plays with F=ma for fun? If he has a degree, I want to know from where and why it hasn't been snatched from his office wall in the middle of the night. As for the rest of my issues with the article....here's the e-mail I sent to [email protected] :

I must take issue with Suzanne Mengel's 4/20/01 article entitled "Taming
twisters." While it makes for a good read, it lacks that element of
research that would make it good journalism. The physicist at the focus
of this article posesses no knowledge of the physics or thermodynamics of
the atmosphere. The concept he presents of the process of tornadogenesis
is laughable (in polite terms) to scientists and storm chasers who have given an earnest effort the study of tornadoes.

Your reporter either did not bother to do any in-depth research to find
out why the ideas presented are not practical/possible, or chose to ignore
what she found. As a scientist, I find such a one-sided presentation of
"fact" to be irresponsible and frankly reprehensible. I realize that
reporters are rarely experts on the subjects they cover, but this is so
full of error as to suggest a blantant disregard for anything more than a
sensational story. This is the only article from your site that I have
read, and it may very well be the last.

Ben

 

[Andrew Khan]

Good one Ben! I like the email.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Adam Taylor]

From his site

but whether it's the updraft or the downdraft that's powering the tornado at which stage of its life is debatable

Really. This guy is pothetic

 

[James Siler]

Ok, I have to jump on this band wagon. I am not the smartest of people, but I know I think in the late 60's they (UN) passed a law stateing no one is to try and use weather modifying war fare or anything for that matter! I think this jack*** fails to realize that if you screw with mother nature, she will do it right back and you don't get dinner and a movie! Second about the comment about people who do these type of idiotic things are people who get hit by a tornados. I thinks it's true. At least the peopel who don't live in tornado alley directly. I was in a tornado when I was 4 and all it made me do is want to learn more about them. Not stop them! I hate stupid people! Ok I am done. Have a good evening everyone!

 

[Chris Sokol]

Hehe...well...this might be the working model.... :lol: :lol: :lol:

http://www.powow.com/orbiteradds/tornadofighter.html

And one has to wonder if this is the real reason behind this little project:

http://www.tornadofighters.com/forum/viewt...wtopic.php?t=45

Get that man some dark shades!

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

I would tend to worry less about science killing storm chasing, then I do about the future of oil prices. There's a legitimate fear for you.

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

I can see another movie coming on!

Pehaps it will be a cross between Deep Impact and Category Six!

I won't even bother to read the article.

Cheers,

Jimmy Deguara

 

[Robert Edmonds]

Don't believe this one bit. Even by following his ideas of how you could destroy a tornado by heating the air your looking at producing insane amounts of energy. For example if we were to heat half of a half mile wide tornado were looking at about 250000 m^2. Also, say he was right about the air up lifting were probably looking at an updraft/downdraft rate of at least 25mph or 11m/s. This means we would need to heat about 2840000(m^3)/s, and following standard air density that is about 3550000kg/s. Also if we are extremely nice and heating completely dry air this means the heat capacity is around 1.005kJ/kg per degree C. From looking at some of the temp differences around a tornado we would probably need a 2.7C degree change in temp. So, if your following me were looking at about a billion watt power generation. This is also if the system is close to perfect no energy loss. Try carring that around while chasing. LOL :lol:

 

[David Wolfson]

IMHO, there's a little more science (not much!) behind using polyacrylamide, e.g. Dyn-O-Gel, for tornado control. It's at least theoretically possible to drop an amount of product into the updraft that's significant at storm-scale. One can hypothesize that locking up thousands of tons of coelescence as goo may do something significant to inhibit the critical RFD mechanism. Of course it also may spin 8" frozen goo-laced hailstones downwind, not to mention the thousands of tons of glop landing everywhere and slowly decaying into acrylamide, a rather nasty carcinogen.

Worth a try, doncha think? :roll: