WEBVTT - Can You Stop a Hurricane? 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:04.560 Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:07.800 Horee Cham and today we're answering the question can you 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:12.000 stop a hurricane? Hurricanes are some of the most destructive 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:16.280 phenomena in nature. A Category four or five hurricane can 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:20.159 cause upwards of one hundred billion dollars in damage and 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:23.680 kill thousands of people depending on where it hits when 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.280 it reaches land. To find out if we can stop them, 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.360 we're going to talk to several experts, including someone who 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:34.360 flies into hurricanes for a living and a scientist who's 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.560 been tracking how these storms have changed over the last 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.160 one hundred years. So batten down the hatches and get 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.320 ready to get blown away as we answer the question 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:57.400 can you stop a hurricane? Hey? Everyone, So today's question 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:01.480 is a pretty tall order. As we'll learn today, the 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:06.319 answer to can you stop a hurricane is actually sort 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:11.800 of yes. Red lease, it's not a no okay. To 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:14.480 get started, we need to know what a hurricane is 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.200 so that we know what we're up against, and I 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:20.200 thought the best way to do that is to take 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:24.240 you inside a hurricane. So I found someone who is 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:28.640 a real life hurricane hunter, which means it's his job 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:33.720 to go into hurricanes. Here's my conversation with doctor John Zowislack, 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:40.560 a researcher at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration or Noah. 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:43.280 Thank you, doctor Zoways Slagg for joining us. 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:45.200 Yeah, it's great to talk to you about hurricanes here. 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:47.880 Well, describe for us what is your current job as 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:48.960 a hurricane hunter. 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:51.160 So, as a hurricane hunters, our job is take an 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.400 airplane into a hurricane. I'm at the no Aircraft Operations 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.320 Center as a flight director and meteorologist. So my job 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:00.520 in the airplanes is essentially helped navigate the storm, help 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:02.400 the pilots out and make sure the data is quality 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:03.960 and make sure we're getting the data to the ground. 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:05.960 How would you describe what a hurricane is? 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:10.079 Complete chaos at times. Obviously they're very large in scale 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:11.880 and when you go out fly one, you can really 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.520 feel the scale of the motion, the scale of the energy. 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.119 So for us, we see them as the danger they are. 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:18.640 We see them for the hazards they are. 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:20.680 So this sounds super dangerous. 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:22.160 Why do it? So? 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:23.919 We often gets the question why do it? Why fly 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.079 an airplane into a hurricane? Right, We're taking a crew 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.000 into a very turbulent environment, just a little bit more 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.359 hazardous than an any pilot would do. But the reality 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.040 is that satellite they see the big scale, right, they 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:37.440 see the cloud field, they see where it's located. But 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.440 to actually see inside those clouds, to see the rain 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.720 field inside those clouds, and particular the winds. Winds are 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:46.240 very very hard to measure from a satellite, So the 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.919 airplane allows us to go into the storm and measure 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:53.280 it at that high resolution scale, both in time and space, 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:56.320 to really understand what's going on inside that cloud field. 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.560 Because when they make landfall, we know the impacts and 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:03.040 them that has on communities. Is what really motivates us 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:04.360 to learn more and forecast better. 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:07.560 Okay, I asked, doctor, is always like, how do you 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:09.800 actually fly into a hurricane? 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.320 How we sample a hurricane with an airplane? First of all, No, 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.480 we have a four engine turboprop airplane called a P three. 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:19.960 They are our storm petting trading aircraft, so they were 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:21.799 built to fly low and slow and they could take 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.200 a punishing too. What we do is we'll set up 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:27.280 a direct path from outside the storm to the eye 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.120 to the other side, and it's a straight line, right. 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.519 The safest way to fly a storm is a straight line. 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:34.480 It's just you get in and out quickest, right. 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.400 Could you maybe describe the whole experience. You take off, 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:39.880 you're flying, You're approaching the storm. What do you see. 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.200 It's just basically you start getting cloudier, You're starting to 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.320 get the rain. You might have a really strong outer band, 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.040 which is a really intense thin line of thunderstorms, and 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:49.760 we're gonna have to navigate through that. You just kind 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:51.800 of have to find the weak spot and get through 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:52.880 the outer band. 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:56.360 Okay, here I thought would be good to explain where 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.200 we are in the hurricane. You can think of a 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:03.600 hurricane as a giant area of circulating air. The area 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.200 is typically three hundred but sometimes up to six hundred 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:10.640 miles wide. And if you've ever seen a satellite image 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:13.480 of a hurricane, it basically looks like a giant white 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.159 cloud that is flushing down the toilet. But actually a 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.160 hurricane is sort of the opposite of a toilet. It's 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.000 a lot of air coming together in a spiral and 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.880 then shooting up from the center towards the sky and 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:30.080 then spreading out into that giant white cloud you see now. 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:32.479 For the first few hundred miles that you're going into 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.559 a hurricane, things aren't too bad. This part is called 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:40.800 the outer band, and you're basically cutting through layers of 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.840 rain and thunderclouds that get progressively more intense. 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.440 And then you start getting towards fifty sixty miles away 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.880 from storm, and now things start happening, right. You're encountering 0:04:54.920 --> 0:05:00.960 more turbulence, the winds are coming up, and I always 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:03.320 say the biggest thing that happens is it gets really loud. 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:06.320 On the airplane. It's already loud enough because of the 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.080 four turboprops running on you, but once you start getting 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.039 the wind, you start really getting the heavy rain, so 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:14.240 it gets really really loud, particularly in the stronger storms. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:23.240 Ending of course it's bumpy. It's kind of a roller coaster, 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.800 but you don't know what the next drop is or 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:32.400 what's coming up next. Wow. 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.479 Okay. As you get closer to the center, the winds 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:41.880 get faster and faster, up to about seventy to ninety 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.760 miles per hour, and then when you get to about 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.839 thirty miles from the center of the storm, you reach 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:52.000 the final band of the hurricane. Here the winds can 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:55.640 reach up to one hundred and sixteen miles per hour. 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.039 This part, called the eye wall, is the one that 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.360 causes the most destruction when it reaches land. 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:11.360 The eyewall is essentially a giant rainfield that's rotating. Now 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:13.039 I don't want to call it a tornado, but it 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:16.280 has that really strong intensi so it's creating a lot 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.080 of turbulent eddies, really really intense turbulent eddies. 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:20.560 Yeah. 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:32.000 Well, then if you make it through that chaotic, intense, 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.719 spinning eye wall, you get to clear, calm air. 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:42.680 So when you get in the eye, the rain comes down, 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:45.160 the winds come down, You look out the window, you're 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.520 gonna generally see a clear area. So if you ever 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:52.160 see the really infamous pictures or hurricanes of that clear eye, 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.320 that's what we call a stadium effect. You just emerge 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:58.440 into the stadium and it's clear above. Everything calms down, 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:00.920 and you just get this beautiful bowl of clouds. So 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.400 it's a true magnificent site. I mean, it's breadthaking. You 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:08.360 can hear audible gasps because you're going into sunlight beaming 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.120 down on you, or at night you might see the moon. 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:13.080 We kind of we call that sort of the Holy 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.760 Girl hurricane flying when you're in the stadium effect and 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:17.760 it's a full moon and you're looking at a full 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.120 moon in the clear eye of this hurricane. But as 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:23.760 magnificent and onspiring as that moment, there's the downside which 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.200 you use. You know, for as beautiful as a storm 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.120 can be, you also know the hazards the risks that 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.120 it poses because it's you know, if we're flying it, 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.480 it's all likelihood, means that it's forecast to potentially make landfall. 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.880 Oh, I see. The more beautiful it is, the more 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.360 dangerous it is to people outside the storm. 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.080 Right. A lot of times that's happening because the storm 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:48.520 is just so intense, right, So it's a magnificent, saddling image. 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.480 It's magnificence flying that statement effect, But it's also a 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.000 bit frightening to us because you know that storm is 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:55.280 extremely intense. 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:58.360 What got you're interested in this field in doing this? 0:07:58.720 --> 0:08:01.240 Yeah, ask my parents. I was growing up. There's two 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:02.680 great gloves I had. 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:03.080 Flying. 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:05.720 Just loved when we took a vacation every summer and 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:08.000 flew there. But I also loved weather. My first book 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.040 I could ever read it was a meteorology book, a 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:13.520 weather guide. Right now, my job is to fly in weather, 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:15.840 so I get to work with aircraft, I get to 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.720 study the weather, so I say I am living the dream. 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:20.720 You might say you're right in the eye of the storm. 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:25.160 Yeah, we're ring the eye of storm. 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:28.000 All right. So having met someone who flies into hurricanes 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.920 for a living, the big question now was whether he 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:36.600 thinks we can stop a hurricane. A lot of people 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:38.880 are wondering but on the internet, if you can stop 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:41.280 a hurricane, how would you answer that question? 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:43.720 Scientifically? If you have to think about the scale and 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.080 the energy of a hurricane. Okay, this is a cloud 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:50.920 field that is several hundred miles large. A hurricane itself 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.640 will released an equivalent heat of about ten thousand nuclear bombs. Okay, 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:57.600 that's a lot of energy. 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:00.960 Okay. When we come back, we're really going to dig 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:03.440 into this question. We're going to talk about all the 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.240 different ways people have proposed to stop a hurricane, and 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:09.760 we're going to talk to different experts about whether they 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.560 think any of these ways would work. Stay with us, 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:26.360 we'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay. We just heard 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:30.040 a first hand account what it's like to go inside 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:32.960 a hurricane, and now we're going to answer the question 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.959 of whether you can stop a hurricane. To do this, 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.840 I reached out to someone who's been studying hurricanes and 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:45.160 storms for over thirty years. Here's my conversation with Professor 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:49.160 Bob Hart. Well, thank you, doctor Heart for joining us. 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:49.679 Hello. 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:55.600 I'm a professor of meteorology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, 0:09:55.880 --> 0:10:00.600 and my research is primarily hurricanes, how they form, and 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.920 trying to help out the public with proving the warnings 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:04.800 and watch us. 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:07.720 I'll ask doctor Heart in a minute if we can 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.520 stop a hurricane. But first I thought it was important 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.599 to talk about how hurricanes form because that's going to 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.800 help us a little later. Okay, back to the conversation. 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:19.719 Amazing. 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.000 I guess we'll start with can you give us a 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.120 brief overview of how hurricanes form? 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:27.640 That's an hour question right there. 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:29.880 Sorry, we need a whirlwind answer from you. 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:33.080 They don't just appear with an eye suddenly. Usually it 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:37.080 takes several days for it to go from disorganized thunderstorms 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:41.640 in the tropics to organized thunderstorms to having an eye 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.040 could take several days to a week, sometimes even longer, 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.880 and it has a life cycle of formation and growth. 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:51.280 Can you maybe step us through that life cycle, like, 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:52.920 how do hurricanes get started? 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.480 Well, there's not one way, and it's a big area 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:56.959 of debate right now. 0:10:57.200 --> 0:10:59.320 Really, we don't know exactly how hurricanes form. 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:01.320 We know so some aspects of it. 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:07.120 That's right, It seems we don't know exactly how hurricanes form. 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:10.600 According to doctor Hart, we know what the basic ingredients 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.880 are for making a hurricane, but we can't really predict 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:18.640 exactly when those ingredients will turn into a hurricane. Here's 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:20.240 how doctor Hart explains it. 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:25.480 We know that you need to have some rotation in 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.640 the atmosphere, whether that's due to the Earth turning corioliss 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:32.920 or due to something else like a front. If you 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.120 have that, and you have a moist atmosphere and you're 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:41.240 over warm water, then those thunderstorms can become increasingly strong, 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.480 increasingly more organized. But the million dollar question that we've 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:49.240 been debating for quite a while now is what specifically 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:53.840 causes those thunderstorms to get organized and what's enough. 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:56.520 When you say organized, what do you mean. 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.599 Well, if you look at a satellite image of the tropics, 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:04.360 you'll find that on average, thunderstorms are pretty sporadic. There's 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.600 popcorn type thunderstorms. You know, thunderstorm in one location and 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:12.040 then an hour away there's another thunderstorm, but in between 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:16.359 there's no rain or no clouds. That's not organized. Organized 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:20.560 would be if they grow in size and the rotation 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.520 that occurs causes them to continue to reform and reform 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.360 and reform so that it isn't short lived, so that 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:30.640 it lasts hours and hours and days and days. 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:35.960 Okay, here's a quick breakdown of how a typical hurricane forms. 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.600 You start with a patch of warm ocean. That's where 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:42.680 most of the energy for a hurricane comes from. That's 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:46.920 what powers the hurricane. This patch of warm water heats 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.640 up the air above it, causing it to go up, 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.280 and as it goes up, it kind of creates a vacuum, 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:57.160 pulling in more air from the surrounding area. So it's 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.959 a little like someone brought in a giant vacuum host 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:04.920 and started sucking air near the surface of the water. Now, 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:08.240 a sucker heart said, if the air has some initial rotation, 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.720 like from the rotation of the Earth, but just randomly 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.560 from the air current, that spinning will create a vortex 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:19.880 as the air gets sucked up, and sometimes the conditions 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.959 will be just right. The air will be moist enough, 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.760 and the top of the atmosphere will be cold enough, 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:28.720 and the wind shear will be low enough, and the 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:31.199 thunderstorms that are there will come together in just the 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:35.800 right way that it creates a complex spinning system that 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:40.240 kind of acts like a runaway, self perpetuating machine that 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:44.040 just gets stronger and stronger on its own, all powered 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:46.480 by the heat from the warm ocean. 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:53.120 Yeah, it's a feedback where the warming that occurs in 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.360 the column above the storm ends up leading to lower 0:13:56.360 --> 0:14:00.000 pressure even more warming, and so it's a nonlinear feedback 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:04.880 that strengthening of a hurricane makes even more strengthening possible. 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.240 And the theory says that as long as you don't 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:11.280 have something getting in the way of that, like land 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:15.760 or cold water, the hurricane will continue to strengthen, but 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.280 it doesn't reach infinity. 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.440 According to doctor Hart, hurricanes would continue to grow and 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:27.360 grow indefinitely if it wasn't for one thing friction. 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.080 There's a reason why we have a category five as 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.960 a maximum, and that's because as it gets stronger and 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.080 stronger and stronger, and now we're talking about winds of 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:42.120 approaching two hundred miles an hour. The friction goes up 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:47.240 very very quickly with friction between what with the ocean, 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:49.960 so friction between the air and the ocean's while we 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:54.280 get large waves in hurricanes. So eventually that friction becomes 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:58.040 so strong that this hurricane cannot intensify any further. 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.880 Okay, those are the basics of how hurricanes form. Now 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:05.720 let's get to the main question, which is can you 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:10.000 stop a hurricane? All right? Now we get to the 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:13.440 kind of controversial part of the topic here. What are 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:17.880 some ways that people have said you can maybe stop 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:22.160 a hurricane? All right? According to doctor Hart, there are 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.640 three basic ways you can try to stop a hurricane. 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.960 Number one, you can mess with the way a hurricane forms. 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.800 Number two, you can try to cut off its energy supply, 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:37.560 and number three you can try to blow it out 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:40.920 of the water. We'll start with number one, messing with 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:42.640 how a hurricane forms. 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:49.200 There were some experiments, it's about seventy five years ago now, 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:53.000 Project Storm Fury, where they did cloud seating of hurricanes. 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:53.880 What does that mean. 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.920 They put certain chemicals in the atmosphere in thunderstorms or 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:02.320 near thunderstorms to dissipate those thunderstorms. So this was like 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:05.000 one of the earliest tests of weather modification. 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:07.720 What did these chemicals? What were they supposed to do? 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:10.880 They would reduce the relative you met the air, so 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.040 the cloud would go away, or you could turn the 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:18.120 liquid more to ice, which changes the physics of the air. 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:20.680 I see. It'd be like throwing salt up into the 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:25.280 atmosphere to lower the freezing point. Maybe something like that. 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:27.080 Yeah, okay. 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:29.560 One way to try to mess with how a hurricane 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.760 forms is to spray the clouds in a hurricane with 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:38.920 basically anti freeze, or actually the opposite of anti freeze. 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.840 And this is something scientists actually tried. Project Storm Fury 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.720 was a twenty year joint project between the US Navy 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:51.400 and the Department of Commerce where they experimented with spring 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:56.479 silver iodide to the clouds outside the eye of a hurricane. 0:16:57.120 --> 0:17:00.200 The idea was that the silver iodide would trigger the 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:03.800 moisture in those clouds to turn to ice and eventually 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:08.439 expand the eye wall, making it weaker. It's something that 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:13.000 actually works in a single small thunderstorm, but showing that 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:17.360 it works in a complex, huge hurricane is a different story. 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.280 The results were nonconclusive, and the reason why they were 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:26.439 abandoned and never done again. Was because they could not 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.359 prove that there was a cause and effect there. Sometimes 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:34.160 it didn't have any effect, sometimes there was an intensification, 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:38.640 and sometimes they weaken anyway, So that experiment's never been redone. 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.280 And you're of course modifying the environment. With all this 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:43.879 junk that you're throwing into the atmosphere, you would be 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.320 dramatically hurting the oceans and us. Even if you could 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:49.520 get all this chemical Think about what it would be 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:51.560 doing to the fish, Think about what it would be 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:52.720 doing to the trees. 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:55.760 I see. So it could be an environmental disaster. 0:17:55.680 --> 0:18:00.320 Yes, okay, without saving another environmental disaster. 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.359 Right, right, okay? What are some other ideas that people 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:04.360 have floated out there? 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:08.000 Pumping up cold water from the deep ocean. Once you 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:11.320 get deep enough, let's say, beyond maybe two hundred and 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.679 three hundred feet, the ocean begins to cool and some 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:18.480 of the ideas are to pump up that cold water 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.760 to the surface to cool off the surface of the 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:24.879 ocean such that all that physics we talked about and 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.520 that feedback doesn't occur or shuts down. 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:31.800 Another idea to stop the hurricane is to shut off 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:35.280 the source of our hurricanes energy, which is the heat 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:39.879 in the ocean, presumably would deploy something like an array 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.800 of deep water pumps that go down two hundred to 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:48.240 three hundred meters and bring up cold water through hoses 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:52.600 or tubes. This could technically work, but. 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:57.800 The problem is you need to cool over a large 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.960 area for one storm, and in order to cool or 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.119 for a large area, you need to drop all these 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.760 devices that we haven't even created yet, and that means 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:08.720 you have to fly them out there in the right location. 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.320 And of course then you also realize that, well, we 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:16.000 don't know the forecast of these things incredibly well, which 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:18.320 means by the time you get there that forecasts may 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:22.240 have changed, and now you've missed your opportunity. 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.680 In other words, you could build this array of water 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.119 pumps and deploy them, but you need to build a 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:33.000 lot of them to cover a large area hundreds of 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:38.280 miles wide, and then you might miss the hurricane could 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:42.040 unexpectedly veer off and miss the area of the ocean 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.640 you were cooling off, So then you need even more 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:52.280 of these pumps. It all gets super expensive. Pumping cold 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:56.440 water that's also just prohibitively expensive, and you don't know 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:58.560 if it's going to work. Yeah, all right, what are 0:19:58.600 --> 0:19:59.960 other ones? I've heard? Nuclear bomb? 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.720 Yeah, I've gotten those questions from the public. Those go back, 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.760 you know, twenty years when I started teaching at FSU, 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.560 before social media became a real big thing. These sort 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:16.679 of questions become very nice graduate school questions for candidacy 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:21.360 exam for PhD students to pursue their PhD, because they 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:24.399 have to go through the math of figuring out is 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.399 this feasible sort of and what are the downsides to it? Well, 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:30.560 all the physics that we've talked about at the beginning 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:33.760 of this for how hurricane strengthens and forms. That's an 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.639 incredible amount of energy, a really incredible amount of energy, 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:40.480 and we can generally calculate it various types of energy, 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.679 kinetic energy, latent energy, thermal energy. So we can come 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:45.920 up with an estimate of the total amount of energy 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:48.360 that is in a hurricane over its life. And then 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:52.040 you can say, okay, well, let's say we wanted to 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:57.120 destroy the hurricane by matching that amount of energy by 0:20:57.119 --> 0:21:01.239 the release of nuclear weapons outside the eye and the 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.359 eye wall of the storm to disrupt it. Right, So 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:09.199 you're basically causing this disruption in the normal structure of 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:13.600 the system with the goal of dissipating it. Well, if 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:15.879 you do the math out, total amount of energy is 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.520 equivalent to basically the entire nuclear arsenal of the world. 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:24.040 In other words, what doctor Hart is saying is you 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:28.119 could stop a hurricane by blowing it up, but you 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:32.800 need about ten thousand nuclear bombs, which is basically all 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:37.639 the nuclear bombs on Earth. That's just to stop one hurricane. 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:41.159 There would still be more hurricanes that season, and the 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:44.280 next year and the year after that, not to mention 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:49.640 the enormous mess exploding ten thousand nuclear bombs would make. 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:53.320 And so even if you were to do that, we 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:56.240 don't know where to put them these weapons, Like where 0:21:56.280 --> 0:21:58.560 exactly do you put them? Do you put them in 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.639 a circle outside the eye? Well, well we don't know. 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:03.520 In the outer part of the storm, we don't know. 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:07.800 And even if you could do that with phenomenal resources, 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:10.479 probably more resources than it would take to go to Mars, 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:16.000 you now have caused a massive environmental disaster, both in 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:18.520 the ocean and the air in this attempt. 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:21.800 Meaning you've basically radiated the entire Atlantic Ocean kind of 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:22.440 and the. 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:24.840 Atmosphere there above it, and the food, the food supply 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.000 because so much of the world's food comes from the ocean, 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:31.680 and the greenhouse effect that exists. Of course, because you're 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:35.239 modifying the structure of the ocean. It's a nightmare. The 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:38.639 planet would be destitute financially, resource wise. 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:45.400 Yeah, let's not do that, all right. When we come back, 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.280 we're going to explore this idea more, and we're going 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:52.520 to learn about the time when humans they have inadvertently 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:58.040 stopped several hurricanes. Stay with us, you're listening to science 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:14.919 stuff and we're back. But the people have mentioned Saharan 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:17.080 dust and wind turbines. 0:23:17.520 --> 0:23:22.280 Yes, there's wind over Africa. Those winds often carry dust 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:26.760 into the atmosphere of the Atlantic, and that dust changes 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:29.800