The benefits would be minimal even if we had the power to cool the ocean. A study led by scientists at the University of Miami shows that using intervention technology to weaken a hurricanes before it makes it a highly inefficient solution.
The main result of the study is that large amounts of artificially cooled water would be needed to weaken the intensity of a storm before it strikes. It doesn't mean that the likelihood for inland damages and safety risks will decrease if the intensity is weakened by a small amount. It makes more sense to focus on adaptation strategies such as reinforcing infrastructure, improving the efficiency of evacuees, and advancement of the science around detection and prediction of impending storms, since any amount of weakening before landfall is a good thing.
The authors used a combination of air-sea interaction theories and a computer model of the atmosphere to answer questions about the effectiveness of artificially cooling the ocean.
They cooled areas of the ocean up to 260,000 km2 in size, larger than the state of Oregon, by up to 2 degrees Celsius. The simulations weakened by only 15 percent even with the largest area cooling. The amount of energy taken from the ocean to achieve this small reduction is more than 100 times what the United States consumes in a year.
"You might think that the main finding of our article, that it's pointless to try to weaken hurricanes, should be obvious," said David Nolan, a professor of atmospheric sciences. Various ideas for Hurricane Modification are submitted for patent every few years. We're happy to be able to address this in the peer reviewed literature.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment.
More information: James Hlywiak et al, Targeted artificial ocean cooling to weaken tropical cyclones would be futile, Communications Earth & Environment (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-022-00519-1
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