Can hurricanes be stopped? by Philip Avery
As Rita edges towards the Texan coastline, some are asking ‘Can human intervention prevent the destruction caused by such powerful storms?’
It is a notion which has been investigated many times before, but given today’s level of technical advancement, many are wondering why we are not heading into these powerful storms and fighting them off as soon as they develop.
This may sound a little far fetched but this method was carried out during the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s. After a brief spell of intense hurricane activity, an American government program was established, named ‘Project Stormfury’, which tried to develop ways to reduce the energy and power of hurricanes. In 1961 a Navy plane flew directly into Hurricane Esther, releasing silver iodide crystals, a process known as cloud seeding.
The iodide crystals are believed to form ice nucleus and are dropped into the clouds surrounding the eye of the hurricane. The idea is that clouds would form around the new nuclei, developing a new eye and shifting the rainfall patterns around the storm. The old eye wall would collapse, reducing the spin and thereby causing the hurricane to be less destructive.
Some reports did indicate that the tests carried out on hurricane Esther were successful. Wind speeds were believed to have been reduced by 10% to 30%. In 1969 hurricane Debbie was seeded twice over a period of four days and reports noted that the intensity of the storm changed by up to 30%.
However, after two decades of government-sponsored research, the project was abandoned due to inconclusive evidence. Cloud seeding was quickly classed to be unreliable as it was soon discovered that hurricanes grow and dissipate on their own, with or without seeding. It was, therefore, impossible to determine whether human intervention helped to disperse the energy of the storms and it was even thought that once seeded, the hurricane simply formed again elsewhere, often stronger.
Since then private companies have conducted smaller scale tests. Some claimed to erase clouds completely from the atmosphere, but again little progress was made.
Project Stormfury was finally abandoned in the 1980’s, with many scientists accepting that the energy of such a powerful natural force is far greater than anything we are able to inflict onto it. The heat energy released by a hurricane is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb being released every 20 minutes.
We may have the technology to put a man on the moon but will we ever be able to stop the full force of mother nature?
Check on Rita's progress on the 'Extreme weather' page on our website.
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