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The midwest's tornado problem: How to eliminate it


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I believe there is a workable strategy for reducing tornadic intensity, but would prefer not to give many details of it. However, for the record, it does not involve building terrain features. It would all have to be done in the geomagnetic field and possibly further out into the solar system. And it would require huge expenditures of time, money and resources. Thus even if my theories about this were some day accepted (not necessarily because my work was accepted but because somebody else succeeded in publishing) then it would take 25-50 years to do the necessary R & D to create the technology to alter the signals and get these storms to spread out and become less intense at specific locations (while similar in total energy expended, just over a larger area).

 

I think this will happen one day, but my prediction is that it won't come in our lifetimes, it will happen around 2080 to 2140 AD. We may need to have reliable space travel to the middle reaches of the solar system to bring about all components of this weather -modification concept. There may also be research underway by other parties who are examining more specific solar-terrestrial energy flows through the geomagnetic field. This would lead to a similar scale of technology being researched for possible weather modification outcomes. It seems more likely than not that the technology would have to be deployed in earth orbit or near space, but possibly it could be deployed from signals transmitted from the earth's surface or at least high-altitude aircraft or orbiting spacecraft.

 

If the same ideas were ever applied to hurricanes, that could be quite dangerous to the stability of the global climate (if you accept there is any such thing). I would rather see those modified to small extent near landfall than totally erased from the weather machine, so to speak. But I think we could probably spread out tornadic energy without fatally disrupting the same global weather machine.

 

It doesn't hurt to think about these things, the walls might actually work to some extent but surely there would then be massive downburst thunderstorms every time cold air suddenly jumped the barriers?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Unfortunately, this idea made BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26492720

 

Worse, a journal published it. This idea reminds me of the flawed ideas from the past that one could simply pump colder water from barges to suppress hurricanes. The scale of such storms is too large and the pumping would have had an insignificant impact. The same applies with this idea on tornadoes. It's a non-starter. It really is no better than some of the wild ideas that have made headlines from social media this winter.

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Unfortunately, this idea made BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26492720

Worse, a journal published it. This idea reminds me of the flawed ideas from the past that one could simply pump colder water from barges to suppress hurricanes. The scale of such storms is too large and the pumping would have had an insignificant impact. The same applies with this idea on tornadoes. It's a non-starter. It really is no better than some of the wild ideas that have made headlines from social media this winter.

What journal published it?

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Thanks for the question. It turns out that The Bulletin of the American Physical Society is a meeting archive, so I was incorrect that it was published in a journal.

 

Cool, thanks. I didn't mean to sound abrasive, I'd just heard through the grapevine that it got rejected from wherever it was submitted (not sure which journal). Certainly standards for getting papers accepted at talks/conferences are less stringent than peer-reviewed publications. :) 

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Cool, thanks. I didn't mean to sound abrasive, I'd just heard through the grapevine that it got rejected from wherever it was submitted (not sure which journal). Certainly standards for getting papers accepted at talks/conferences are less stringent than peer-reviewed publications. :)

Not a problem at all. I'm happy you raised the question as I took a closer look.

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  • 7 months later...

Unfortunately, this idea made BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26492720

 

Worse, a journal published it. This idea reminds me of the flawed ideas from the past that one could simply pump colder water from barges to suppress hurricanes. The scale of such storms is too large and the pumping would have had an insignificant impact. The same applies with this idea on tornadoes. It's a non-starter. It really is no better than some of the wild ideas that have made headlines from social media this winter.

 

There was another idea to use sodium polyacrylate-like material on the surface of the ocean... In the direct path of the hurricane. Supposedly this would slow the evaporation rates and weaken the hurricane substantially. This idea could have legs, if the material was bio-degradable. 

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Would not be feasible to build structures that size.    But meteorlogically, the concept might work. It would limit wind speeds in the lowest 1500ft of the atmosphere.  

 

Edit: nevermind, the paper said they only found a difference with 2500M walls.  300M made no difference and is much shorter than the ozarks.

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http://www.ejssm.org/ojs/index.php/ejssm/article/view/141/100 

Paper from NCSU Grad Student Brice Coffer testing this hypothesis

 

Good stuff.

 

There are too many meteorological oversights to count in this whole "proposal", it's pretty insane. Not to mention the obvious economic hilarity to consider.

Would not be feasible to build structures that size.    But meteorlogically, the concept might work. It would limit wind speeds in the lowest 1500ft of the atmosphere.

 

Did you not read the paper?

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I don't know why people want to completely alter Earth's processes and patterns. Yes, tornadoes and hurricanes are deadly, but bigger problems arise if you start building walls and trying to weaken hurricanes with chemicals. It's all about balancing the Earth's temperatures. I'd imagine if you'd remove those weather features, then you're opening a whole new can of worms.

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I don't know why people want to completely alter Earth's processes and patterns. Yes, tornadoes and hurricanes are deadly, but bigger problems arise if you start building walls and trying to weaken hurricanes with chemicals. It's all about balancing the Earth's temperatures. I'd imagine if you'd remove those weather features, then you're opening a whole new can of worms.

 

The walls would cause a domino effect of some kind, I don't think weakening hurricanes at sea would produce any negative effects.

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