- Scientists are developing techniques aimed at taming
the power of the world's most devastating storms. The project, backed by
funds from Nasa, would involve seeding clouds, coating seas with
biodegradable
'slicks' and even beaming microwave radiation from orbiting power stations
to slow or even halt hurricanes.
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- Controlling these great, rolling tempests - known as
hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons in the western Pacific and cyclones
in the eastern Pacific - is now considered an urgent priority. Last month
Hurricane Ivan killed more than 70 people and destroyed thousands of homes,
miles of roads, swaths of vegetation and scores of hotels as it swept over
Grenada, Jamaica, Tobago, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, Haiti
and finally Cuba. Three similar recent storms caused the same kind of
devastation,
and meteorologists predict the next two decades will see increases in
numbers
and severity of hurricanes. Global warming is likely to worsen the
problem.
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- 'Nothing stands in the way of hurricanes,' says Ross
Hoffman, in the current issue of Scientific American. 'But must these
fearful
forces be forever beyond our control?' The answer is 'no', he adds, for
one day they could be controlled thanks to developments in computing,
satellite
technology and material sciences.
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- Backed by Nasa funds, his team of scientists at
Atmospheric
and Environmental Research, a research and development consulting firm,
have created computer simulations of past hurricanes, including Hurricane
Iniki which caused enormous damage to the Hawaiian island Kauai in 1992,
and Hurricane Andrew, which devastated south Florida in the same year.
To their surprise they found that by making only relatively small changes
to temperatures and other meteorological variables they could induce major
alterations in its path and behaviour. Slight tinkering sent Iniki on a
route that missed Kauai, for example. 'The question is: how can such
perturbations
be achieved?' asks Hoffman.
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- The team has proposed several answers. One is to coat
the ocean in front of a hurricane with a biodegradable oil which would
slow the evaporation of water from the sea surface, depriving the
developing
storm of its sustenance. Another technique is to seed the eyes of
hurricanes
with silver iodide crystals, speeding formation of ice from water vapour.
Spread by aircraft, these seed clouds could cause hurricanes to dissipate,
although the group acknowledges that early tests have been only partially
successful.
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- The ultimate technique would be the construction of a
flotilla of orbiting power stations that would collect the Sun's rays and
beam them to Earth as microwave radiation. These satellites are considered
a promising, non-polluting energy source for the future, but could also
be used to heat the sea and air around hurricanes, altering their paths
and dissipating their energy.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather
- /Story/0,2763,1324052,00.html
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