Many areas are hit by hurricanes every year. The damage from the most powerful of them is, at times, up to several tens of billions of dollars. Scientists have long wondered how to influence the power of the hurricane, thereby reducing the amount of economic damage and the number of human lives that have become its victims.
The most destructive and powerful hurricanes, originating in the ocean, hit the densely populated areas of the east coast of America, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. When calculating the damage caused by them, not only the cost of destroyed buildings and structures, infrastructure and damaged vehicles is taken into account, but also losses from closed restaurants, shops, canceled flights. The enormous sums spent each time to restore damage made scientists think about how to minimize this damage and the number of human casualties.
British meteorological scientists from the University of Lida have proposed their methodology, which will weaken the powerful typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones that periodically rage in the tropical zones of the planet. The results of their research in the summer of 2012 were published in the popular science journal Atmospheric Science Letters.
As you know, a hurricane occurs due to the formation of the energy of evaporation of a large amount of water from the surface of the ocean, the upper layers of which are heated as a result of intense exposure to sunlight. They investigated, conducted experiments and analyzed what effect the temperature of the upper water layers directly has on the power and destructive potential of an incipient hurricane. It turned out that the strength of the hurricane is in direct proportion to it.
The authors of the scientific work, based on the research results, came to the conclusion that by lowering the water temperature, it is possible to achieve a decrease in the power of the hurricane. They proposed an elegant and simple solution to this problem: clouds created artificially over the surface of the ocean will reflect the sun's rays and cool the ocean water column, thereby preventing a typhoon or hurricane from accelerating to critical speeds.
In their work, meteorologists used the experience of using the Marine Cloud Brightening technology. In this process, small vessels are involved, from the board of which the smallest particles of water are sprayed over the ocean. Using a special chemical composition, this technology can also create artificial clouds in those zones where powerful cyclones and hurricanes are formed. There are only three of them - in the North Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Southwest Pacific.
Calculations made by scientists have shown that if you measure the power of a hurricane on a five-point scale, the proposed method allows you to reduce it by one level. This can only be achieved by lowering the ocean surface temperature by a few degrees.
