Could this in theory work to "kill" off thunderstorms?

[James Gustina]

I'm not sure why the responses have been so dismissive in nature. It's absolutely possible. Your plan itself may be rooted in 21st century technology and unable to achieve the task, but the fact that we understand the mechanisms that create thunderstorms most certainly means we can eventually deter them in some scenarios. A supercell thunderstorm is a relatively small mechanism in scale when compared to an extra-tropical low or a hurricane. I can see technology being developed within the next 50-100 years that can effectively "rip" a supercell apart, maybe set up and ready to go outside of tornado-prone metropolitan areas. I'm not sure what the mechanism will be, but I am confident it will be developed. You're not an idiot for suggesting it.


Side note: We have already developed technology to destroy a supercell: an atomic bomb. Granted, it's more destructive than the original event, but it can be done.

It may very well be that it becomes possible, but it still gets into the issue of where does that energy go? While the Law of Conservation of Energy isn't applicable because it's not a closed system, energy is still conserved and the atmosphere is in a constant state of attempting to reach equilibrium through the dispersion and conversion of that energy. Even though supercells occur on the mesoscale, they still contain absolutely staggering amounts of energy that have to be displaced and converted somehow.

 

[Raymond Mason]

It may very well be that it becomes possible, but it still gets into the issue of where does that energy go? While the Law of Conservation of Energy isn't applicable because it's not a closed system, energy is still conserved and the atmosphere is in a constant state of attempting to reach equilibrium through the dispersion and conversion of that energy. Even though supercells occur on the mesoscale, they still contain absolutely staggering amounts of energy that have to be displaced and converted somehow.

Wouldn't it be nice to harness all that energy for our own personal use? Much like a power generator. If we took control of the weather, volcanoes, and earth quakes (Plus harness the energy of the planet) we would be a tier 1 civilization. I guess we got some ways to go before we hit tier 1.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I think that a semi-permanent capping inversion might be the only thing capable of squashing supercells. You can have many days of extreme instability that never gets equalized thanks to strong capping. Instead of the explosive short-term release of an updraft, the heat just dissipates at night over time as the boundary layer cools. Whether or not something like that could be artificially generated would be the question. I'd think the amount of energy required to do anything of that nature would likely cost far more than repairing damage that storms would do.

 

[Greg Campbell]

Raymond, I don't think you appreciate the magnitude of the physics involved.

Consider a small chunk of thunderstorm updraft - a parcel of air one cubic mile in size.
The updraft of a big supercell will be many times larger...

That cubic mile weighs at least 6 million tons. (The weight of dry air. Let's not even worry about rain, hail, cows, etc.)

What does 6 million tons look like? It looks like a freight train about 600 miles long. (~150 tons per car, each car ~80 feet long)
Let's chop it up and make 600 trains, each one mile long.
And what are our virtual freight trains doing? They are traveling at well over 100 miles per hour - the speed of a healthy updraft.
(Speeds of 150+ have been recorded in strong storms.)

Picture 600 freight trains running on 600 parallel tracks (well over a mile wide!), all barreling along together at 100+MPH.
Now throw a big net in front of them! (Uh, oh!)
I think it's clear that using a few airplanes as anchors is not quite gonna make it...

 

[MClarkson]

Since Greg did the math for the first idea, I'll do some math for Dan's idea... create a capping inversion. This neglects the engineering (how do you efficiently heat a massive segment of air a km or 2 up and nothing else) challenge, and that in some cases there isnt much room for a cap, that the entire atmosphere is nearly unstable.

Lets assume we are heating a block of air 300m thick, raising its temperature 7 degrees C and you have to do this over the area of a moderate risk... say 100,000km^2. The specific heat of air is 1000 j/kg/degree... and you get 2*10^17 joules. Roughly equivalent to 4-5 days of electrical generation for the entire US(about 2 billion dollars), or just about the energy produced by a 50 megaton tsar bomb.

 

[MClarkson]

"block of air 300m thick, raising its temperature 7 degrees C"

Ahhh I made a mistake. That itself would be unstable, so you'd actually be heating more air than that... perhaps 3 times as much if the atmosphere gives you that much room for a cap(it will not all the time).

 

[Rob H]

I'm not sure why the responses have been so dismissive in nature. It's absolutely possible.

Even if it's possible, Paul brought up the most important point. If the near storm environment is capable of convection initiation and you delay that, you are effectively creating a loaded gun scenario or making it "even more loadeder"

Eventually the atmosphere will reach equilibrium and the storms will likely be stronger because you allowed instability to build up. You might even create a scenario like 5/3/99 where small little holes in the cap allowed monster supercells to go up. People (and insurance companies) will throw a s**t-fit the very first time this happens and people die or damage is caused.

edit: More people die from coconut and pinecone related head injuries than from tornadoes. Why spend billions (trillions?) trying to radically alter the weather? It's all about efficiency and things like electrical code enforcement/standards, drinking&driving, etc. provide way bigger bang for the buck when saving lives.

 

[Joshua T. Clark]

As far as the science on anthropogenic climate change is concerned, we, as humans, are already controlling the weather, just maybe not the way some people want to.

Regarding more focused and immediate controls on the weather...the atmosphere is a HUGE sink of energy. We would need to put way more than you probably could imagine into it to get it to do what we want.

Just the thought of interfering with atmospheric processes is disaster waiting to happen. Jeff, I supposed you believe the the science is settled regarding anthropogenic climate change.

 

[rdale]

It is settled, but that's not related to this discussion. Whether it existed or not wouldn't change the ability to stop storms.

 

[Paul Knightley]

Thought experiments like this are very worthwhile, though - much of Einstein's work was based on thought experiments.

We should never imagine we know everything about the Universe, in general, and more specifically, the atmosphere. Someday someone may well find a method of safely suppressing severe thunderstorm development - of course, it won't be using a sheet and planes, but even considering the idea starts to get more questions asked, and some answered (e.g. the amount of energy required to destroy a storm).

The key is more likely to be preventing development rather than trying to stop it once it's going. And even then, you still have to be sure that the environment won't try to dissipate the energy in an even larger/more violent fashion.

 

[Dan Robinson]

It will probably come down to cost - would retrofitting all existing structures and requiring all new construction to be able to withstand EF-3 winds be less expensive in the long run? Think of the building codes in Japan that routinely stand up to earthquakes and typhoons.

 

[Joshua T. Clark]

It is settled, but that's not related to this discussion. Whether it existed or not wouldn't change the ability to stop storms.

So let me get this straight, scientists have been studying Einstein's theories for decades, they have come across very compelling evidence but absolutely nothing has been settled regarding general relativity but a group of people with a silly hockey stick graph and backed by an institutionally corrupt world organization (the UN and the IPCC) have settled this debate. I think not. It is so naive, bordering on some kind of psychosis for these anthropogenic climate change fanatics to believe that way. Science is a continual process, the more you learn, the more questions and uncertainty shows it self.

 

[rdale]

backed by an institutionally corrupt world organization (the UN and the IPCC) have settled this debate.

Uh, it appears you are not aware that the UN and IPCC do not do research. They simply compile the available research and produce a summarized document.

It is so naive, bordering on some kind of psychosis for these anthropogenic climate change fanatics to believe that way.

Uh, climate change science goes through the same process that meteorology goes through, and I've yet to hear anyone say we should axe SPC because we don't know absolutely everything about severe weather forecasting. Same with CC. We don't know 100% of what's going on, but we do know enough that it's clear other possible explanations (the sun, the tilt, the oceans, etc.) don't account for it. Medical researchers don't know why some people get cancer from smoking and some don't. Does that mean you say smoking is safe because uncertainty exists?

Science is a continual process, the more you learn, the more questions and uncertainty shows it self.

Actually no. The more you learn, the less uncertainty.

If you have some research you're holding up your sleeve that shows the accepted science is wrong, now is the time to bring it up (imagine how famous you'll be!) Otherwise as scientists we don't give a rats batooty what you "think" about climate change, so take your conspiracy theories back to your compound and mount up your tin foil hat because the FEMA black helicopters are on the way

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I say we leave the thunderstorms alone and focus on something like texting while driving.

 

[rdale]

I'm sure we all do that too