Study finds ocean cooling to weaken hurricanes won’t help

A new study finds that even if unlimited energy was used to artificially cool the oceans to weaken hurricanes, the benefits would be minimal and the effort essentially unnecessary.

Led by scientists from the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences at the University of Miami (UM), the study published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment shows that the energy required to use an intervention technique to weaken a hurricane before it hits the ground makes it a highly ineffective disaster mitigation solution.

“The main finding of our study is that large volumes of industrially cooled water would only be necessary for a slight weakening of hurricane intensity before landing,” said lead author James Helliwick, a UM Rosenstiel alumnus.

He continued, “Furthermore, a weakening of sharpness in marginal amounts does not necessarily indicate that the potential for internal damage and security risks will also decrease.” “While any weakness before landing is a good thing, for these reasons it makes sense to focus on coping strategies such as strengthening infrastructure, improving the efficiency of evacuation procedures, and advancing the science around detecting and predicting impending storms.”

To scientifically answer questions about the effectiveness of artificial ocean cooling in weakening hurricanes, the authors used a combination of atmospheric and marine interaction theories and a highly sophisticated computer model of the atmosphere.

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In their computer simulations, they have cooled regions of the ocean as much as 260,000 square kilometers — the equivalent of 21,000 cubic kilometers of water — by up to 2 degrees Celsius. Even with a larger cooling area, hurricane simulations weaken by only 15%. The amount of energy taken from the ocean to achieve this small reduction is more than 100 times the amount consumed in the United States in 2019 alone.

“You might think that the main conclusion of our paper, which is that it’s not feasible to try to weaken hurricanes, should be obvious,” said David Nolan, professor of atmospheric sciences at UM Rosenstiel and study director. However, many ideas about modifying hurricanes appear frequently in the popular media and are even the subject of patents every few years. We’re glad to be able to put something in the peer-reviewed literature that really addresses this matter.

via Phys.org

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