Bill Gates takes on hurricanes
Bill Gates thinks big. His charitable foundation has poured $1 billion into the fight against that great scourge of humankind, malaria, resulting in the creation of a new vaccine that is 100% effective in mice, and is now headed towards trials in humans. If successful, Gates' efforts have the potential to save millions of lives. Gates has also turned his attention to another great scourge of humankind, the hurricane. In a 2008 patent filing that recently came to light, Bill Gates and his friends presented a scheme for reducing the strength of hurricanes by cooling sea surface temperatures, using a fleet of ships that bring up cold water from the depths. Can Gates really pull this off? I don't think so. The obstacles are fourfold: technical, financial, environmental, and legal.
Figure 1. A diagram from a 2008 Bill Gates patent filing, depicting an array of hurricane-control vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. Image credit: techflash.com.
Technical issues
While modification of hurricanes is theoretically possible, the scale of the undertaking is truly enormous. A fleet of dozens or hundreds of ships spanning a huge swath of ocean would be required, and these ships would have to be able to withstand the 50-foot waves and 160 mph winds a major Category 5 hurricane could deliver. As I discussed when a similar scheme was proposed in 2006 by Atmocean, Inc., it is not clear how long the cold water pumped to the surface will stay there--the cold water pumped to the surface is more dense than the water beneath it, and so will tend to sink, allowing warmer water beneath to replace it and warm the surface waters again. Modeling studies and field studies are needed to determine if the cold water can stay at the surface long enough to significantly affect a hurricane. Furthermore, simply cooling the ocean may have no effect on a hurricane, if the storm is in a favorable upper-atmospheric environment with low wind shear.
Financial issues
Any hurricane modification effort is going to be tremendously expensive. The cost of the array of cooling pumps proposed by Atmocean in 2006 for the Gulf of Mexico was pegged at $2.4 billion. Gates' scheme would have a similar cost. He proposes paying for it through government funding and the sale of insurance policies in hurricane-prone areas.
Environmental issues
A large change to the ocean temperatures over a wide area of ocean is bound to have significant--and unknown--impacts on fisheries and wildlife. Regional weather patterns may also be affected, intensifying droughts or bringing heavy rains and flooding.
Legal issues
Hurricanes naturally make sudden unpredictable course shifts, and the hurricane modification efforts are also capable of causing track shifts in a storm. Residents on the coast hit by the modified storm will want to sue, and there will be many lawyers more than happy to take their case. Gates would have to get special legislation passed to protect his company from lawsuits, such Congress passed for the gun industry in 2006.
Summary
In summary, we simply don't know enough about hurricanes yet to safely engage in modifying them. A lot more research is needed before we should spend the huge sums needed to attempt hurricane modification. The Department of Homeland Security has a $1 million research effort going that will attempt to answer some of these questions, called HURRMIT (The Identification and Testing of Hurricane Mitigation Hypotheses). The HURRMIT program is evaluating the potential of a number of hurricane modification techniques, including:
Seeding with tiny hygroscopic aerosols to suppress warm rain (Rosenfeld et al. 2007 and Cotton et al., 2007)
Seeding with radiation-absorbing aerosols (i.e., carbon black) at the storm periphery (Gray et al., 1976)
Seeding with radiation-absorbing aerosols (i.e., carbon black) at storm top (Alamaro et al., 2006)
Pumping cool water from the depths to the ocean surface in front of the hurricane (Ginis and Kithil, 2008)
Frankly, I'm dubious that the money being spent on HURRMIT is worth it, given the four huge obstacles to hurricane modification I presented above. However, the research may provide some new insights into hurricane intensification that we don't have now.
For more insight on this issue, read the Washington Post article published on this subject earlier this year.
In closing, I'll present the proposal one reader of an New Orleans online newspaper had:
"[Bill Gates] should just have one of his employees write an ActiveX Script for Google maps so we can just highlight the hurricane, right click on it, then select delete. Or maybe just cut and paste it farther out into the Atlantic Ocean."
Controlling hurricanes, Hollywood style
Hollywood's latest attempt to create a weather disaster epic is itself a disaster, as many of you who suffered through last night's installment of "The Storm" miniseries on NBC will agree. The uninspired plot involves government/military bad guys and a noble scientist who heroically tries to save the world, with a good measure of made-for-TV chase scenes, murders, and special effects thrown in. The hero scientist Dr. Jonathan Kirk (James Van Der Beek) has a scheme whereby one can control the weather by bouncing crackling streams of energy from a ground-based array of dishes off of satellites and into the ionosphere, which then gets "peeled away like an onion". Dr. Kirk then uses the energy to bring life-giving rains to the Sudan, and to steer a hurricane away from Florida. The trouble is, he doesn't quite have things figured out. Unintended side effects occur, such as the Mojave Desert getting 8 inches of snow the day after 112°F temperatures. More problematically, the hurricane heading for Florida strengthens instead of weakening. In one scene, a radar animation of the hurricane off the coast of Florida shows the powerful storm spinning clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, defying the laws of physics. Hmm, that's some pretty powerful weather control technology! The scientific basis for the weather control scheme is preposterous--ground-based energy streams beamed into the ionosphere would not appreciably affect the weather. The weather is made in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere closest to the ground. Furthermore, the amount of energy needed to cause the kind of disturbances portrayed in the movie are enormous, similar in scale to the entire electrical output of the world. A small array of ground-based dishes could only channel perhaps a trillionth of the amount of energy required. The movie's special effects are cheesy, the acting average, the plot weak, and the science behind the the story completely implausible, making this weather disaster movie as disastrous as the equally rotten Day After Tomorrow movie. The movie's main redeeming grace is as a cautionary tale--weather modification on a large scale will certainly have unintended side effects, and we should not engage in such efforts until we have a much greater understanding of how the weather and climate work.
Scientific American has an interesting article that talks about the proposed Bill Gates hurricane modification idea in more detail.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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You are right,everyone has drank the bottled water and thrown out the supplies they think have gone bad or taking up space.In other words I concursters samsters what you JFVsters,still prepared.
is ok man' :)
Alot of the people think they fixed or fullproofed the problems-not sure fullproofed is really a word but is a state of mind some coastal residents are in.Plus they forget how quick stores run out of supplies and no moe come till days after,includung the all precious GASOLINE.
yes
There is still a strong Bermuda ridge. The ensemble mean doesn't show the NAO becoming very positive
IKE was projected to strike 180 KM. South of my location. It hit 180 KM. North of me! In that 360 KM. of beach territory it removed 12 to 20 cm. of sand from the entire strand of beach and deposited it in offshore bars. It since has tried to make a reappearance but many local authorities have deemed this is bad for the "tourists." So, they have removed it from the beach and deposited it in the foredunes.
The storm-surge of IKE came within 100 meters of my home but the wind never blew in P.A. A mandatory evacuation was in force. Did I remain to protect my "castle" ? NO - I had already evacuated just as I have done about 4 previous times in the last 35 years.
Am I anxious that the Law Enforcement Agencies now have the power to fine or forcibly remove me from my property ? NO - (Even though I'm ultra-conservative) I'm out of there on my own long before they come around!
Am I happy that they now have that right? Not particularly, but I hope that they will use that power to forcibly remove those who have little or no respect for MY property while I am not there to protect it!!
PortABeachBum.
I'm not surprised at all. Everybody thinks the levees are fixed because they didn't fail during Gustav. The New Orleans area is becoming more vulnerable each day, and Boy are they in for a surprise the next time we are effected by a Major Hurricane. If anybody got in a Helicopter and saw how close the water has gotten to the City they would be horrified. A 200 Foot High Levee can't save us I don't care what the Army Corps of Engineers say because they were the reason my house had 12 Feet of Water for a Month! The only way to fix the coastal erosion problem is to destroy the MS River Levee's south of New Orleans or we are done. The destruction to the marsh is almost irreversible. You think Katrina would have waken everyone up, but apparently they haven't. The federal government is going to be some sorry they didn't make this priority 1 when there is no more Port Fourchon or Grand or no Highway 1 and Every Prices go through the roof. I am disgusted that the attention has shifted away from the protection of our city. That's how I feel and I am sure most New Orleanians agree.
Sorry,don't think there is really a way to stop it and feel sorry long time NOLA peeps.I feel alot of FL is going to be in the same boat but,thats mother nature.She has has been shaping and naturaly taking care of this big round ball for a long time and will do what she wants with or without tunnels,levees,monoxides or humans nuclear stupidity.We will have to adjust to her not,her to us.
And Ike too..
Well not everyone forgets. They had a town hall meeting here in Plaquemines parish tonight to talk about the levees and other things.
my own words
at the above chart with 4 days to go in july look at 77 then 09 you can clearly see that 77 and 09 are right on the mark so far for ace if the next 4 days go without cyclone activity 09 will be tied with 77 for ace
Ryan Maue's Seasonal Tropical Cyclone Activity Update from fla state unvi.
The last tropical cyclone dissipated on July 19, at 00Z (Molave) in the Western Pacific. All global basins are remarkably quiet, especially for the end of July. So far July ACE is about 15, well below the past-30 year average of 70. With a week to go in the month, some sort of activity is necessary to avoid July 2009 becoming the quietest July in the past 30-years.
July 27th, 2004.
Dead quiet. Lots of dust. Nothing to watch. Little did we know that the Atlantic would be set on fire mere days later.
What you saw last year was the most we could handle...
I know this has most likely been asked before, but how does the NAO affect storm formation? What is it, in easy terms? I got a bit confused tonight (might be the cough syrup, though...). Thanks!
That is a good pic of big beautiful mamma.I would suggest that we don't try messing with her any more after the nuke test on land and sea,taking out her forest,drilling into places we don't need to,etc......By the way I have been watching you weather nuts for about two years and appreciate the time ya'll put into the site in order to better inform people like me that can look at the radars but don't have clue where anything may go or develope-ster,just about forgot that.
thanks :) ....
Sam, I hate to say it but the amount of money it will take to build bigger pump houses and levees will eventually be out weighed.Same will happen down here in FL and in other countries as well.When the water pumps and levees become bigger and more expensive than the cities themselves than?????
..where ya gonna have Mardi Gras ?
Fargo?..LOL
Pat,I love your Led Z post.
Not saying Nola is going anywhere soon but all is rising and changing.I just hope the people and neighborhoods I was in last year really take head to pending storms and don't fall under the illusion that all is fixed and safe.
As far as Mardi Gras goes I heard Burt Ratan was building a special craft for zero G on 2010,IF YOU HAVE THE CASH-yes caps needed.ster
But then again..Id fly most anything given the chance
Daughter with a SR-71 1995
Sorry that got all jacked up-ster
Mobile .. =P
Lol, I was going to say that. Considering Mobile, AL started Mardi Gras in the States :)
Link
Atlantic Ocean View (Updated ~3 hours)
Where ya gonna put um?
On the BB-61?
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