Weather Control Satellites

This is old news, but quite cool. AntiPasto writes "According to this article at techreview.com ... the Eastlund Scientific Enterprises Corporation has a way to stop a tornado from happening by simply microwaving it. Which brings up the question whether to have it on defrost or not, or more importantly how do you get it in there?" The technical paper is available here and space.com had an article a while back, here.

Real Genius

[tonyj]

The movie was called Real Genius [imdb.com] starring Val Kilmer. There, they used a Giant Space Laser to pop an aluminum foil ball full of popcorn.

Global Hubris, anyone?

[SEWilco]

Actually controlling some of the most powerfull phenomena on Earth is opening a can of worms I don't think we are prepared to open.

You're overestimating our power. Right now there are 1,800 thunderstorms on the planet [fema.gov]. Most are too small, or don't have enough temperature difference to be violent enough for tornadoes. Even here in the USA where we get Arctic-fed cold fronts spilling across the continent, only 1% of storms cause tornadoes.

And the proposal would not stop thunderstorms and their rain, the goal is to disrupt a single powerful updraft, and leave multiple-updraft thunderstorms operating.

Not that it would be easy to create and control that much power safely. If you have that powerful a power plant, you could instead just have a flying building with enough fans to directly change airflows. Sometimes applying energy in the form of a physical device is easier than radiant energy.

Re:Hubris, anyone?

[3waygeek]

If we can build something which is genuinely capable of turning off tornadoes, there are plenty of high-risk zones that will suddenly be lucrative development opportunities. They'll be developed. It will be necessary to turn off the storms in those areas to prevent massive damage to life and property.

Actually, large cities tend to be somewhat tornado-resistant. They tend to be a bit warmer than the surrounding countryside, which seems to deflect twisters, and reinforced concrete construction, which is a standard for many commercial buildings, handles tornadoes pretty well, and in fact, seems to weaken any funnel clouds that have the temerity to attack them.

Re:Hubris, anyone?

[Alik]

You have a point; I was reading something a short while ago about the city of Atlanta actually creating its own weather. Apparently, the heat it collects/emits causes clouds to form at the borders, roll on in, and drench the city.

However, as far as this thread goes, I've got two counterpoints:

1) Newly developed land generally doesn't start with reinforced concrete skyscrapers. It'll most likely begin with suburban sprawl, which last I saw was pretty vulnerable. (Remember those towns I mentioned are near me?)

2) That works now, when there's still a relatively low city density. What happens as the area of cities increases? I believe that the heat shell is able to deflect tornadoes now, but if the storm has nowhere else to go, I can see it breaking such a barrier. (I think it's reasonable to assume that city area is going to increase in the coming years. Population's still rising, and we've gotta put them *somewhere*.)

Re:Hubris, anyone?

[Alik]

Brings up an interesting question: What happens to a species that is perfectly adapted to all environmental dangers (including other species)?

IMHO, such an animal is impossible in any form of dynamic environment. As soon as the environment changes, adaptation is no longer optimal. The animal can adapt, but adaptation will always lag environment unless the animal has perfect predictive capacity (also probably impossible).

More importantly, it's still got to deal with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Eventually, it will run out of resources or time and join the rest of us as some nice hydrogen clouds down around 1K.

Fighting Greenhouse Effects

[Municipa]

This may help fight greenhouse effects which are expected to alter rain distribution across the globe. Many say these effects have already been seen in recent weather. Unfortunately there is a great potential for misuse. To make matters worse, I imagine it is very hard to prove someone tampered with the weather. Because of that I'm almost certain it will see some misuse by our government.

If perhaps we could put web cams on the satellites and allow people to see raw unencoded data (actual data would be encrypted so that others couldn't send their own commands) sent to the satellites to control them, it would allow the public to verify what the weather control satellites are doing. The weather satellites should never do anything that the public is unaware of.

Re:Other uses for giant microwaves

[Municipa]

I see the other 2 folks who replied didn't bother to read the first comment.

cool..

[chowda]

This means Van Dekamps(sp) can catch/sell pre microwaved fish sticks!! just point this puppy into the water and grab the cooked fish that comes to the surface!

You could use it to end pest problems on farms..

or destroy missle guidence systems...

or just interupt communication......

screw the side effects right?

Mucking with the weather

[thesparkle]

Is a no-no.

Weather patterns are part of the earth's ability to correct and maintain itself.

It is also used to control the bacteria called man from overrunning and destroying the planet.

Aim and Accuracy

[martyb]

From the article:

According to modeling by Eastlund on supercomputers at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms, about 100 million watts of energy added to the descending air column could disrupt a downdraft that otherwise might spawn a tornado.

Notwithstanding the potentially beneficial aspect of preventing a tornado from spawning, I get the heebie geebies thinking of the potential loss of life when that 100 megawatts of microwaves is more tightly focused and used as a weapon to cook all the inhabitants of a city. Same problems if they tried to use lasers, instead.

Seems to me that the desire to use such a device rises with the population of the region that the tornado approaches. What are the risks to people who are in the path of those microwaves? Cancer? Genetic mutation? Who is going to make the assessment of what amount of injury to people via microwaves is acceptable? I'd like to see much more work invested in the sociological implications of such a device before much more work goes towards its implications. Could it be that this is a solution whose price we cannot afford?

With the power to create comes the power to destroy.

Other uses for giant microwaves

[Speldor]

Lets not limit ourselves to military and ecological uses here. There was a movie in the 80's (I forget the name) where some university kids used something like this to pop a few tons of popcorn in some guy's house...

Hell, without the limitations of fitting it into a countertop model, I could nuke the BIGGEST plate of nachos ever...

God I love science!

Re:Hubris, anyone?

[Speldor]

I quite agree. Actually controlling some of the most powerfull phenomena on Earth (if not controlling, at least stopping them from happening) is opening a can of worms I don't think we are prepared to open. Stopping all tornados near populated areas, while sounding like a good saftey measure, is a foolish idea. Not trying to bait flame or anything, but natural disater and intraspecies conflict are the two things even close to providing a population control on humans. If we remove all of the dangers from our world, not only will we allow overpopulation to skyrocket even more, but we will remove all need to continue evolving (from a natural order standpoint). Brings up an interesting question: What happens to a species that is perfectly adapted to all environmental dangers (including other species)?

How it works

[Speldor]

Ok, bear with me as I am trying to remember this stuff from highschool earth science class. A tornado is caused when a high pressure front and a low pressure front meet each other under certain conditions. Basic physics tells us that high pressure (at least with air mass) usually means higher tempuratures, while low pressure means lower temps (due to the relative motion and friction of all the particles against each other). So a tornado is essentialy formed when warm and cold air move quickly into each other.

The reason "heat shields" around dense, highrise cityscapes and the tornado microwave work is because they are removing the mass of cold air that helps to create the twister.

So, Alik is right, a twister of sufficient power (and especialy one of high velocity) could run straight through a so called "heat shield" if one were in the area. But, since the dense cities we are talking about are giving off so much heat in a stable location, the cold front cannot meet the warm front and share that "special hug" to make the little ball of joy we call a tornado. Thats why you *USUALLY* don't hear about the buggers hitting big cities, and only lower end urban areas (like trailer parks, which are usually out of town and on flat plains, good breeding ground for the storms). Of course there was that tornado that materialized in the middle of Salt Lake City and flew up Temple Street and then dissapeared before it actually hit the bastion of the Mormon church (just barely missed it), but lets not devolve into religious flamewar.

Hope that was at least semi-informative...

Not weather lasers, but the closest we've gotten..

[Speldor]

"Although I have no proof, intution suggests that if you remove a major climate phenomenon entirely, you have the potential for seriously screwing up the whole system. Environmental scientists would scream bloody murder if such a system ever went up." Actualy, now that I think about it, there is proof of sorts that your theory is true. The closest we have come to changes of this nature is the damming of the Nile. Aswan Dam has thrown off the cycle of flooding that the Nile used to go through every year and as a result, the fertile land of the Nile Valley has shrunk every year. Without the riverbed nutrients the annual flood would bring to the areas surrounding the river, the quality of crops has steadily declined.

Not total climate changes like we are discussing here, but possibly the closest we have come to it.

Re:Other uses for giant microwaves

[jovlinger]

'cha ever see the first microwave ovens the scientists dreamt up? They basically looked like giant upside down collanders.

Sweet design. I'd love to lay my hands on one (but not while working...)

Johan

Hubris, anyone?

[Alik]

Being able to control tornadoes is a wonderful thing. I came close to being killed by one when I was younger, and nearby towns have been totally wrecked by them (and I'm not even in the Midwest).

One teeny problem I see with this is the problem of balancing ecological requirements with human expansionist tendencies. If we can build something which is genuinely capable of turning off tornadoes, there are plenty of high-risk zones that will suddenly be lucrative development opportunities. They'll be developed. It will be necessary to turn off the storms in those areas to prevent massive damage to life and property.

Personally, if you gave me the option to set the "Tornadoes" flag for the planet to "No", I wouldn't do it. Although I have no proof, intution suggests that if you remove a major climate phenomenon entirely, you have the potential for seriously screwing up the whole system. Environmental scientists would scream bloody murder if such a system ever went up.

The obvious solution is to allow storms to form in unpopulated zones. Two problems exist there. One, if there's a square inch of earth that *can* be made habitable, someone will want to live there. Two, once you create the storm, you can't steer it. It might form deep in the wilderness, but move fairly quickly into a populated region. My impression from reading this is that it can only be used to stop storms before they start.

It's not at all a bad idea, I'm just really worried that it's going to be implemented/used poorly and that we're all going to get screwed over.