It just occurred to me that an iceberg placed in front of a hurricane could take the energy out of it. I just did a quick google, and came up with this guy, who thought it up ten years ago, but it's not quantified in any way.

I don't know how sensitive storms are to ocean surface temps, so you'd have to figure out how much you needed to lower the temperature, and over how wide an area, to see if it was in any way feasible. But I'd have to think that an iceberg in the tropics could do some pretty good cooling over a pretty broad area. Of course, getting it into position quickly could be a challenge. And around here, and in the Bahamas, the water is so shallow it would probably run aground.

Don't you think an iceberg would be way too small to bother a storm the size of Katrina (or Rita)? I remember this thing stretching across 1/3 to 1/2 of the gulf.

I'm no expert in this, and probably just as qualified as the rest of the commenters here to expound on this (i.e., not at all).

But IF a large iceberg could be placed in the path of the eye, it MIGHT make a small difference, based on the pronouncements of the meteorologists that Katrina picked up so much strength in the Gulf because the Gulf waters were so warm (90 degrees in some places). Though it would be smarter to place the iceberg long before the storm became a Cat. 4 or 5. And no, I'm definitely not qualified to do the math required.

Would it work? Probably not, but who knows? At least we can be pretty sure it wouldn't harm anything, since it definitely wouldn't increase the storm's strength.

I doubt we'll ever find out, though. Logistics, and cost, in all likelihood would be overwhelming. (At least, until we perfect that Star Trek transporter thingy. ;-p)

Think about the mass of an iceberg you can realistically hope to move. Now think about the mass of, say, the top 100 ft. of water over a square mile... over ten square miles... of a hundred square miles (still much smaller than the 'pumping" area of a hurricane). Unless you could place it just right when the storm is still a tiny proto-tropical-depression off West Africa... think ice cube in a swimming pool.

Rand, I'm starting to worry about you.

Don't you know that releasing all that fresh water right on top of the gulf stream would cause it to shut down resulting in "abrupt climate change". The next thing would be a hurricane blizzard forming over New Jersey causing the temperature to drop to -150F, at which point everything will instantly freeze!!!

ARE YOU INSANE!!!!!!

I seem to recall that there was some discussion in RN/RAF quarters during WWII about using an iceberg towed into the north atlantic as a rather unsinkable aircraft carrier... this idea seems to be on the same order of difficulty

sounds like it would be easier to stick a huge pool cover over a section of the carabean. If you want you could make it silver and jsut leave it on over the daytime.

I think the generally accepted minimum Sea-Surface-Temperature in the Meteorology/Climatology world needed for Hurricane formation and maintinance is 72 degrees. Hurricanes traveling over sub 72 SSTs will weaken and eventually become extra-tropical storms; unless they move back over water 72+.

Leland,

The next thing would be a hurricane blizzard forming over New Jersey causing the temperature to drop to -150F, at which point everything will instantly freeze!!!

I'm not seeing the problem. ;-)

Course, I live in California which is immune from retributive natural disasters because of our noble Earth Mother worship thing. Well, not quite, but it'll clear up after a group hug where we realize we're all, you know, like the same and stuff, even those rich, white WASP SOB's who aren't good enough to lick my Birkenstocks.

Rand, you make me feel better; I had just that "stupid" idea a few weeks ago.

I think the problems other posters bring up, nail it, in that, yes, if we could move a large enough iceberg fast enough to put it in the way of a hurricane, it might have some minor effect.

I think, by the time we have access to that much power, we probably could just have the E.A.S Agamemnon come in and hover on the hurricane for a while. :)

Any scheme to weaken hurricanes is going to involve lots of energy. That means it probably doesn't make sense unless that energy is ordinarily being manipulated for some other reason.

Here's a suggestion: suppose we do large-scale storage of energy in the form of compressed air in seabed storage tanks (exploiting hydrostatic pressure to reduce the structural demands on the tanks) for load leveling of intermittent supply and/or demand. A GW-year of stored energy would involve compressing roughly 100 km^3 of air to 100 bar.

In the event of a bad hurricane, one could rapidly release the stored air. This would serve several purposes: it would cause cold deep ocean water to mix to the surface, it would cool itself by expansion, and it would act to fill in the low pressure in the core of the hurricane, should the storm be passing directly over the storage facilities.

I was just scribbling some numbers
to get an idea of how big an iceberg
would have to be to calm a hurricane.

You'd probably want to just cool the
top 10' of water over an area the eye
will pass over, say 100 miles by 100
miles.

This would take an iceberg approximately
21 kilometers x 21 kilometers by 10 meters
thick. to lower the temperature 4 deg C.

Or to do this with a power plant, 645 gigawatts
over one day. My idea was to use OTEC plants
built into deepwater spars, but that probably
wouldn't work since using the biggest otec plants
in the world would require thousands.

How about this?

http://www.onr.navy.mil/focus/ocean/vessels/videoflip.htm

The FLIP vessel can be towed into position and can sink its bow section into the water to transition from a surface vessel to a ocean research platform. Originally it was developed for sonar research but then was converted to be used to gather information about the exchange of energies between the water and the atmosphere. This design seems like it would be perfect for exchange the colder water down deep with the warm water at the surface. We could build an armada of these vessels, each one probably having to be somewhat larger to penetrate into deep cold water. Then see where a tropical depression was beginning to form out into the Atlantic and tow these vessels into position in their surface configuration. Then, transition them into their platform configuration and begin the heat exchange process. Now I am not certain which would be the better method. Either physically displace colder water from the deep and pump it out into the surface. Or, just use a contained system and make an enormous heat pump and cool the surrounding water directly by pumping it through an evaporative core.

> I seem to recall that there was some discussion in RN/RAF quarters
> during WWII about using an iceberg towed into the north atlantic as a rather
> unsinkable aircraft carrier...

Not precisely. The idea was actually to build an artificial iceberg, using a mixture of ice and sawdust called pykrete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habbakuk