Most of the tropical cyclone activity is in the Pacific. We tend to focus on the Atlantic because that's where most of us live. Stopping or reducing Atlantic hurricanes would have only a small impact on the global heat transfer budget. Stronger storms and storms that sit over the same area for longer periods of time or larger storms in size, even if the winds are weaker would all move more water around. While most of the poleward transport is done out in the open ocean as storms recurve northward, those that make landfall also carry their moisture and associated heat energy poleward as they are caught up in weather fronts.
It was discussed here recently that reducing or eliminating hurricanes would cause more winter storms and implied this might be a negative consequence of doing so. If true, this would show that some of the energy that the hurricanes would have taken poleward winds up there anyway in the form of other weather systems as the overall ocean atmosphere system attempts to redistribute tropical heat accumulated during the summer. If the same amount of heat energy is moved this way as by the hurricanes, then eliminating hurricanes would not have adverse consequences. In other words, would you rather be hit in the face with a baseball bat 6 times a year (landfalling hurricanes) or have marshmallows thrown at you every week from November through March (winter storms)? Further investigation of this would be needed to quantity the relative risks if hurricane mitigation is possible. Only about 10% of all tropical systems form below the equator and most of these are relatively weak storms. Note also that most of the land area is above the equator, so the two hemispheres have different responses to the same heat energy inputs. The impact of the variable heat transfer from tropical systems on hemispheric climate change has not been determined, but can be expected to be a minor contributor as they still only affect a very small percentage of the overall ocean. There would be no way to increase the number of such storms. The number of waves that emerge from Africa during the Cape Verde season (late June to early October) seems to be fixed at about one every 3 days and intensification is dependent on many factors. ----- Original Message ----- From: "dsw_s" <[email protected]> To: "geoengineering" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 6:06 AM Subject: [geo] Re: Hawaii Saved by Shear Luck Again Do stronger storms mix water deeper? (It seems obvious that they would, but lots of things seem obvious and aren't true.) If so, it would seem that having more weak storms would re-churn the same thinner layer of water more often, transporting less heat toward the poles than if fewer big storms mix the heat deeply. There's also the strong asymmetry between northern and southern hemispheres. It may be that decreasing storms in one hemisphere and letting them increase in the other could help with global sea level and global average temperature. On Aug 17, 3:24 am, Mike MacCracken <[email protected]> wrote: > In fact, Kerry Emanuel and students has a hypothesis that increased > tropical > cyclone activity (so number and or power and/or duration) and consequent > vertical stirring of low latitude ocean areas is essential to providing > the > extra meridional energy flux to explain how the Cretaceous can be so warm > in > the polar regions without the tropics being too much warmer. > > Mike MacCracken > > On 8/16/09 2:38 AM, "global_frozing" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Will it be right to say that hurricane is the process of moving heat > > up and out, so in fact the hurricane mitigation will work for global > > warming, not against it? > > If it so then better try to provoke the typhoons in the right places > > than try to stop them or weaken them. > > > Aleksey > > globalfrozing.com > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
