Is it Possible to Weaken a Tropical Cyclone?
Sketch of a Solution Using the Locally Available Energy
The grandiose but redoubtable meteorological events known as tropical cyclones, hurricanes or typhoons are primarily caused by an excessive rise in the surface temperature of tropical seas during the hot season. Too large a temperature disequilibrium between the ocean surface and the upper atmosphere can first transform a tropical depression into a tropical storm, then into a hurricane when the system meets a bifurcation and crosses a more or less chaotic zone.
Recent developments in non-linear thermodynamics and in the physics of chaos show that order appears, characterized by an eye and its wall of clouds, when a tropical storm turns into a hurricane. The system self-organizes and then becomes a gigantic thermal power plant, mobile on the surface of the ocean, that uses its motive power to develop even further.
The situation is, in many respects, similar to that of safety valves in which order appears in the form of self-organized supersonic flows that interfere violently with the structures. In both hurricanes and valves, this emerging order is harmful because it hinders the necessary dissipation of energy.
The aim of this article is to outline a possible solution to destroy this order contained in a hurricane so as to weaken it by downgrading it in a tropical storm.
Article published by : « International Journal of Applied Environmental Sciences » (2019)
Captain Nemo and the crew of the submarine Nautilus watching a vistemboir for hurricane.
(adapted from « Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea » – Jules Verne)
