Icebergs will take too long to melt and hence, any freshwater released will be well mixed. As you note, it is not possible to move icebergs, so the idea has no practical basis. The liquefied air idea has also been discussed before as well as using liquid nitrogen. It would have no impact due to the size of the storms. Hurricanes are constantly replenishing their energy through the evaporation and condensation of water. A temporary cooling of the atmosphere in the middle layers of the atmosphere from the release of a cold gas would have no lasting effect. ----- Original Message ----- From: Bonnelle Denis To: Geoengineering Cc: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 9:39 AM Subject: [geo] TR: Hurricane paper.
Dear group, A friend of mine has received the attached paper, which deals with a problem you have discussed some times: how control hurricanes? The proposed idea is to let some liquefied air tanks (100,000 tons each) inject a large quantity of coldness into selected points of a hurricane in order to control / weaken it (other details about vapour volume / latent heat don't seem to bring much added value). My opinion is that liquefied air is pretty expensive and energy-consuming, when really huge quantities of coldness (probably much more than 100,000 tons of it) would be required to have any noticeable effect on a big hurricane. But the idea could be interesting. You know about the idea of dragging large icebergs towards desert-neighbouring towns and converting them to fresh water. Doing the same but in order to let these melting icebergs (or parts of ice sheet), near a populated tropical coast, just during the hurricane season, face a hurricane by cooling the sea water down by some degrees down to a some-meters depth, so that the hurricane begins to behave like over the continent (i.e. begin to weaken) rather than still over the warm sea (still strengthening itself), could it make some sense? The idea is that this freshly melted water is fresh water, i.e. it can float over the salted heavier sea water, so that this cold layer (or any mix of this cold fresh water and warm salted water) would rather efficiently stay between the warm sea water and the air. Then, it would behave as a thermal isolation which would slow down the heat transfer from the sea to the air (this heat transfer is a latent heat transfer, as water evaporates: less evaporation would take place from this cold water layer). Mechanical ways of breaking an iceberg into smaller pieces just before a hurricane comes in the neighbourhood, would still have to be developed. Best regards, Denis Bonnelle. Dear prof, My name is Pranjali and I came to you the other day after our Thurs morning class to request you to read a paper that my father wrote on Hurricanes. I realised today that it hadn't reached you so here's another attempt at sending it! :) My father and I would really appreciate some feedback on it. My ENTG hasn't been working for a while, kindly make note of this e-mail address. ([email protected]) Hoping to hear from you soon. Best regards, Pranjali -- 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. -- 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.
