MessageToEagle.com - Environmental scientists have decided to reconsider once again a controversial
idea of using futuristic ships to shoot salt water high into the sky over the oceans.
Hopefully, the technique could reduce hurricane intensity and create clouds that reflect sunlight,
decrease sea surface temperatures where hurricanes form and thus counter global warming.
The technique proposed by scientists is the so-called Marine Cloud Brightening. It is part of a broader
concept known as geoengineering - comprehensively including efforts to use technology to manipulate the environment.
Global warming could lead to fewer but more-intense storms, and according to a study published in the
Nature journal, "the number of major Atlantic hurricanes per year may almost double by the end of
the century in response to global warming."
Hurricanes are the most powerful, destructive forces of nature on Earth on Earth.
Depending on their strength, hurricanes can be divided into 5 categories -the weakest is category 1 and
the most destructive and powerful is category 5 that often takes victims.
In a paper, published in
Atmospheric Science Letters, the authors propose using cloud seeding to decrease sea surface
temperatures where hurricanes form.
The scientists focused on the relationship between sea surface temperature and the energy associated with
the destructive potential of hurricanes.
The idea is to target marine stratocumulus clouds, which cover an estimated quarter of the world's oceans,
to prevent hurricanes forming, instead of than seeding storm clouds or hurricanes directly.
"Hurricanes derive their energy from the heat contained in the surface waters of the ocean," said Dr Alan Gadian
from the University of Leeds.
A conceptualized image of an unmanned, wind-powered, remotely
controlled ship that could be used to implement cloud brightening. Image Credits: John MacNeill
"If we are able to increase the amount of sunlight reflected by clouds above the hurricane development
region then there will be less energy to feed the hurricanes."
Using MCB, the authors propose that unmanned vehicles could spray tiny seawater droplets, a good fraction of
which would rise into the clouds above, increasing their droplet numbers and thereby the cloud reflectivity and duration.
In this way, more sunlight is bounced back into space, thereby reducing sea surface temperature.
Click on image to enlarge
A satellite image shows the trails left behind by ships as they cross the Pacific Ocean. Credits: NASA
The team's calculations are based on a climate ocean atmosphere coupling model (HadGEM1 - a
dataset including a control run and a number of climate change experiments.
This rather controversial scientific idea could help reduce the power of developing hurricanes by one category.
Somewhat different cloud-seeding projects, designed to directly influence rainfall amounts, already exist
around the world and were most famously used in China during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
"Data shows that over the last three decades hurricane intensity has increased in the Northern Atlantic,
the Indian and South-West Pacific Oceans," said Gadian.
"We simulated the impact of seeding on these three areas, with particular focus on the Atlantic hurricane
months of August, September and October."
The calculations show that when targeting clouds in identified hurricane development regions the technique
could reduce an average sea surface temperature by up to a few degrees, greatly decreasing the amount of
energy available to hurricane formation.
One potential drawback to the idea is the impact of cloud seeding on rainfall in neighbouring regions.
The team noted concerns that seeding in the Atlantic could lead to a significant reduction of rainfall in
the Amazon basin and elsewhere. However, if different patterns of seeding were used, such rainfall reductions
were not found over land.
"Much more research is needed and we are clear that cloud seeding should not be deployed until we are sure there
will be no adverse consequences regarding rainfall," concluded Gadian.
"However if our calculations are correct, judicious seeding of maritime clouds could be invaluable for
significantly reducing the destructive power of future hurricanes."
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UPDATE: This article has now been updated with additional information from NASA including images and video!
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