Is This Person Nuts Or Not? Opinions Needed

[Bridget Beddow]

This person is going to try and \"weaken\" Hurricane Ivan.

Sounds like something those fools from Wild Boyz would do as one of their incredible stunts.

Interesting :?

 

[Anthony Petito]

They're getting the press, gotta hand them that.

They were on Fox News this afternoon talking about it. I didn't get to actually listen as I was in the gym.. but I just shook my head and laughed.

 

[Glenn Rivers]

Anti-Ivan powder

Suppose he uses 250 tonnes of the powder and it obsorbes 4,000 times its weight....that would be 10^6 (one million cubic metres of water). A circle of troposphere 360 km in diameter with 60 mm of precipitatable water contains 6*10^9 cubic metres of water. Taking away 10^6 cubic metres of this water takes away 1/6000 th of the total water....big deal. If the residence time of the water in the hurricane is about 1 day (it is probably less) the 10^6 cubic metres of water would be replaced in about 14 seconds.

If the water soaked up is already in liquid form, Ivan has already obtained its latent heat.

Not sure if this guy is crazy, but he might want to spend some time with the mathamatics of this experiment.

 

[Billy Griffin]

Don't knock it 'til you try it

First, I do agree that these ideas show that these folks have far too much money and time on their hands, but... who knows, you can't blame a guy for trying ideas even if they do seem rediculous.

And let's not jump too quick... for we too have our "tornado tank", the team who drove right into the heart of what we still don't know if it were a tornado or gustnado or anti-cyclonic, etc. etc., and then we have Warren Faidley... who makes a LIVING at doing this weather stuff... who'd a "thunk" it.

Who knows, it this guy does get the plane, I wonder who will get more glory, the idea creator, or the pilot who's dumb enough to fly the thing into a Cat-5 Hurricane ??? :wink:

 

[Melissa Moon]

That's silly, but I would be interested in seeing him actually do it

 

[Evan Bookbinder]

Yeh, this one is just *too* good to pass up.

There are so many flaws with this experiment, I probably won't remember all of them before I hit the reply button.

1.) From personal correspondence with several hurricane hunters plus my own knowledge of aviation meteorology, turbulence is greatest in towering cumulus...and can be severe or extreme in glaciated Tcu. A 747 would be ripped to shreds anywhere in the vicinity of the CDO (central dense overcast). The hurricane hunter aircraft are specially designed to handle the turbulence of a hurricane, which can be quite extreme -- just ask the hundreds of media people who thought they were going on a joy ride only to puke their guts out.

2.) Rainfall is a byproduct of any storm system, not a cause. Hurricanes get their energy from the latent heat released by condensation of water vapor. Dyno-O-Mat's absorbent materials appear to work on liquids, which therefore should have no negative impact on a hurricane. If the goal is to stop flooding, then to extreme extent they may be onto something. However, it is my opinion that "absorbing" the rain would actually INTENSIFY the hurricane. By removing any evaporative cooling processes induced by rainfall, you increase the instability and latent heat available.

3.) Ignoring issue #2, the amount of liquid water removed by the amount of absorbent that could be loaded safely onto a 747 (accounting for fuel and several passengers), would only remove but a small fraction of liquid water content inside the hurricane at any given point. This math is proven quite nicely by Mr. Rivers. At the rate precipitation is generated inside even a minimal hurricane, this effect would be overwhelmed and offset in a matter of seconds to several minutes.

4.) As stated before, good luck getting the airplane. A small feat in itself.

5.) Would the goal not to be to remove the SOURCE of a hurricane's energy, not the byproduct? Maybe inflatable mountains? I too thought the idea of "covering" the ocean seemed slightly more logical, although it does raise the question of what a nearly non-frictional surface would do and how it would affect boundary layer instability. Recall hurricane Danny which actually strengthened over the southeast US where ambient conditions were very tropical and the lack of terrain relief provided few obstacles to weaken the system.

6.) If the feat was by some miracle successful, defying all laws of physics, removing much needed rainfall from drought stricken inland areas could result in unforseen lawsuits by farmers, etc... Just another twist on the liability issue.

Having spent many months of my life (including the past week) in Florida, I found it most amusing that "Dyno-Mite" claims to have stopped a thunderstorm back in early tests a couple years ago. Anyone who lives in SE FL can tell you that on a given day dozens of pulse shower/thunderstorm cells develop and collapse in < 30 minutes given little to no ambient wind shear. A look at satellite/radar data back on the day of their "successful test" shows an innoculous shower that would have fallen apart anyways.

Just some food for thought,
Evan

 

[MClarkson]

If a P3, C130, and G4 can take a hurricane routinely, im sure a 747 can.

Especially at high altitude, where the winds are lighter inside a hurricane.

but how exactly does one empty 200 tons of material out of a 747 at flight levels? Put on an oxygen mask, open the door, and start tossing bags out?

 

[Geoff Boyle]

Having gone through 25 hours of ground school (curriculum for the written pilot exam); I can tell you right now that a fully loaded 747-100/200 would be pushed down like a racket hitting a ball. A Jumbo Jet is just too heavy against that kind of wind shear. There wouldn't be enough lift to keep the thing up at a reasonable altitude. Even if they could keep it in the air, the engines would most likely quit under the gross amount of stress they would be put through. Note that turbine engines are a lot more complicated to run and keep running then your regular turboprop engines on the Hurricane Hunters.

However, If they intend to fly above the Hurricane, it might just work (I mean the flying part). Though I still have a lot of doubts about it. Reason being, we were taught to stay FAR away from any strong meteorological disturbance. It's just too hard to fly an aircraft not modified for those kind of conditions. To many things could happen at a moments notice. The most likely to go wrong is pilot error. Unless they are crack airforce pilots, I doubt they have done this kind of thing before.

Here, I pulled out my aircraft encyclopedia to show you the major weight difference between the 2 most common Hurricane Hunters and the 747-100/200. Note that the 747 tanker will be somewhat heavier fully loaded and modified. This will show how much more difficult it will be to fly it in or around a Hurricane.

Max take off weight for each aircraft:

Boeing 747-100/200: 600,000 pounds (272,155 kilograms)
Lockheed WC-130: 155,000 pounds (69,750 kilograms)
Lockheed P-3 Orion: 139,760 pounds (63,394.1 kilograms)

 

[Chris Sokol]

And this years Darwin award winner is........

 

[Glen Romine]

Originally posted by MClarkson


Especially at high altitude, where the winds are lighter inside a hurricane.

True, since hurricanes are warm core systems, the strongest winds in the system are at the top of the boundary layer, which is about 500 m above sea level out over open water. The winds steadily decrease from there up. Hurricane hunter aircraft fly up around 3,000 m (~700 mb), and the winds are still fairly potent at this height. I presume though, that the experiment proposed here would be much higher up, say around 10,000 m, and the winds there will be much, much weaker. Also, relatively limited buoyancy is present in hurricane environments, and peaks down around 700 mb, so vertical velocities will not be as extreme at that altitude. It probably will still be turbulent, as gravity waves will be likely, but I'd be surprised if a 747 wasn't structurally sound enough to handle it.

As for the experiment, also agree with what was earlier suggested - probably would have minimal impact on the hurricane, but the concept of weather modification should not be discounted wholesale, and sometimes you need to think outside the box to come up with good ideas. The HRD spent years trying to think up with ways to modify hurricanes, and came up with nothing effective.

Glen

 

[Bridget Beddow]

Would this be along the lines of telling everyone in Oklahoma to open all their doors to their houses and release all the cool air from their homes in order to bring down temperatures enough to affect the weather in a certain area? :lol:

I'm just trying to grasp how close to reality this could really be.

 

[JR Hehnly]

I'm planning my experiment to verify that a hurricane will lose intensity when in contact with urine. Since I don't have a boat or a plane I'll have to do the experiment when Ivan reaches the coast. I plan on standing on the shore and peeing into the wind as the eyewall comes ashore. I expect Ivan's intensity to immediately begin to decrease, and for the storm to become a tropical storm within 24 hours. I'll post in a few days and let you know if it verifies.

 

[Geoff Boyle]

Originally posted by j_r_hehnly
I'm planning my experiment to verify that a hurricane will lose intensity when in contact with urine. Since I don't have a boat or a plane I'll have to do the experiment when Ivan reaches the coast. I plan on standing on the shore and peeing into the wind as the eyewall comes ashore. I expect Ivan's intensity to immediately begin to decrease, and for the storm to become a tropical storm within 24 hours. I'll post in a few days and let you know if it verifies.

Make sure you don't pee directly facing the wind. It might fly back to ya.

 

[Greg Campbell]

It seems the whole idea is miss-thought. It's not like all that 'absorbed' water is going to vanish; it's still coming down, just in jellified form. As others have pointed out, how will this affect the storm's energy balance?

To weaken a hurricane, you've got to inhibit evaporation (or build a mountain in the middle o the ocean...). Blowing every oil well in the Gulf of Mexico might actually weaken a storm, depending on how well the oil 'sticks' to the surface in rough seas.

You've also got the old Stormfury cloud seeding plans that actually do remove heat from the storm. What was the verdict on that program?

-Greg

 

[David Young]

Originally posted by David Wolfson
I was curious about the properties of polyacrylamide (the chemical in Dyn-O-Gel) and came across this additional take on the issue: http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Chemtra.../Dyn-O-Gel.html

Also, here's the Dyn-O-Mat weather modification patent, for our reading pleasure: http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Chemtra...DynoPatent.html

WARNING: This website is produced in a facility that processes nuts.

Seriously, poke around on that site for a while and have a good laugh. And maybe one of you more formally trained in meteorology than I could give the Chemtrails folks a lesson or two in atmospheric physics?