FAQ: Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them? | Hacker News Reader

FAQ: Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?

aoml.noaa.gov

28 pointsKliment27 comments

This was actually written about in project plowshare (peaceful uses of nuclear weapons) and has significantly more info about it than this casual dismissal.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015077324005;vi...

First quote from a meta article: [

The initial idea involved weakening the storms and changing their trajectory — not necessarily destroying them. He theorized America could achieve this by detonating nukes in the air just outside the eye of the storm.

“It seems such a burst would, for at least 15 minutes, greatly influence the horizontals circulation of a hurricane … if a burst were made on one side of a storm or two bursts on opposite sides of a storm, considerable asymmetry in circulation could result,” ]

Second: [ According to Reed, the eye of a hurricane is about 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the storm. “It appears that a megaton explosion in the eye would engulf and entrain a large quantity of this hot ‘eye’ air and carry it out of the storm into the stratosphere.”

Thus heated, the nuked air at the center of the hurricane would rush upwards, pulling the hot air at the center of the storm with it. Then the colder air from the side walls of the hurricane would rush in to fill this gap and slow — or possibly even stop the hurricane. ]

Great link, thanks. Was any of this ever tried? Not necessarily using nukes, but perhaps in simulation or in smaller scale?

I'd be surprised if this question was posed anywhere but in the US.

I am surprised that they went to such lengths to explain why it's an obviously stupid idea that doesn't work and would instead make a terrible thing considerably worse. Like pretty much every other problem people think about solving with nukes.

I'm not from US but I've wondered this exact thing - since hurricanes form in very specific weather conditions, if we detonated even a small nuke in the eye of the hurricane surely it would upset the pressure/temperature balance enough that the hurricane would dissipate? I don't think it's a stupid question at all - and I am glad I finally read the answer as to why it wouldn't work at all.

Sure, but the only reason you'd pose that question is that you seriously underestimate

A) the force of a hurricane and

B) the consequences of detonating a nuclear bomb.

It's understandable you might underestimate the force of a hurricane relative to that of a nuclear detonation because it's very very large and unless you're familiar with both you might not be aware of the orders of magnitude involved.

I don't understand how you'd underestimate the potential dangers of detonating a nuke though, unless you live in a country that still considers "the nuclear option" a valid one.

Seems like the best option for getting rid of a civilization threatening meteoroid though.

To paraphrase Carl Sagan, it was once an obviously stupid idea to believe the earth wasn't flat, or that the sun didn't revolve around it.

We should consider all the tools we have at our disposal and there shouldn't be any questions that are off limits and not allowed to be asked, however obviously stupid they appear.

Whoever asked this question was curious, imaginative, and wrong.

NOAA understands this and that's why they went to such lengths to provide a great answer to the question.

Your knee-jerk attitude of "nuclear weapons - bad!" is neither constructive nor scientific.

> it was once an obviously stupid idea to believe the earth wasn't flat, or that the sun didn't revolve around it.

When, though? According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth it's been considered spherical since at least the 6th century BC (first documented mention) and Aristarchus had a heliocentric model in ~250BC.

This is pedantic sniping. The poster's point stands, despite your objection to the flat-earth claim.

Do you want sharknados? Because this is the kind of thinking that leads to sharknados.

> The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x10^13 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 10^13 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.

The human race now uses ~1.8 x 10^13 watts.[0] But that's still less than half. Size does matter.

0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

That is way too dismissive, wrongly comparing total cyclone energy with what we can generate.

A more reasonable objection would be that we don't desire a radioactive cyclone. This is an obvious downside, though there are low-fallout designs (most energy from fusion) that aren't too bad. We did survive the 1960s after all.

We'd have to simulate and test many times. Better prediction capability, for both cyclones and nukes, would increase the chance of knowing if we made a difference.

Nukes might not be the best way. Silver nitrate cloud seeding was tried in the 1950s, but we can't know if it actually made a difference because we didn't have much ability to predict things back then. (wimpy computers) Another approach is to block ocean evaporation. Create an oil slick as large as the cyclone, and there you go.

Maybe we need all three at once: oil slick to weaken it, then nukes and silver nitrate to steer it. Note that this would likely be an operation that puts the Berlin airlift to shame.

Hilarious to read such a detailed answer to a stupid question.

Scary that nukes seem to become a swiss army knife solution to every problem (isis, north korea and now hurricanes). Aweful rhetoric from world leaders combined with media hype I guess.

Reminds me of the also hilarious poster from The Simpsons "Nuke the whales" :)

There are nukes and there are nukes. You can build a nuke that produces a lot of fallout and contaminates large areas for decades, or you can build one that is just a big explosive with little if any side effects. If a particular problem can be solved by releasing a lot of energy in one place quickly then it's worth at least considering a nuclear explosion. As others have mentioned - nukes have been considered for peaceful engineering projects in the past, and successfully used in some, like closing off oil well fires that couldn't be extinguished in any other ways - small nuclear device solved the problem without any side effects.

I'm aware that nuclear tests are done at sea but there is always going to be fallout. The oceans and the planet is already contaminated enough. Fallout aside, we understand very little about weather. It's difficult to predict if it's going to rain tomorrow or not. We have no idea what happens to the weather if we manage to stop a hurricane...

Of course, and that's why using nukes against hurricanes is a bad idea, but I don't think there's anything stupid about at least asking the question.

Nuking and fallout also tend to carry somewhat abstract and emotional meanings to the every day person. You essentially dispersing (or fusing likewise) certain molecule bonds which release heat and energy, which can be deadly, and the layer of "molecule depth" in which this happens makes it so it messes up the molecule bonds off the human body with rigorous results.

While there are certain difference, without the negative connotation these kinds of manipulation can equally bring something good.

You can't cut diamond with a a cardboard knife either and life itself is power by a giant fusion reactor

It turns out that Tropical Cyclones do provide a necessary function...wikipedia says: "They also carry heat energy away from the tropics and transport it toward temperate latitudes, which may play an important role in modulating regional and global climate."

So I think the desired goal of the question (that we ought to destroy tropical cyclones) might not be a good goal for the health of the planet. Anyway, even if a cyclone is destroyed, the hot water it would have removed would still remain and would simply increase the chance for another cyclone to form.

"The ability to destroy a city is insignificant next to the power of a hurricane."

well... Size matters :)

I found it extremely interesting to see someone explain it in a scientific way instead of just saying "no, won't work". I'm sure that would be a great parent having all the answers to all the questions a child can ever ask.

Interesting question, unfortunately not explored in depth sufficiently enough. Maybe we should pitch that question to what-if xkcd. :-)

I'm a bit surprised that this question gets asked today. It should be common knowledge that nuking stuff has bad side effects. Although maybe the questioner thinks that because the nuking is over the ocean instead of land, it doesn't pose any danger.

Now if that question had been asked in the 60s, I wouldn't have been surprised if they actually would have tested it.

This has in fact been asked on a what-if, by hundreds of people, and the author linked to this article:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/23/

Oh, you are right, but unfortunately, it didn't the right treatment.

Every problem can be solved with a nuke, of course.

But as with all other fixes, the following bugs might be worse than the actual problem.

Spoiler for white supremacists and weapon lovers: the answer is no.

White supremacists ?

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