Earth Sciences

Targeted artificial ocean cooling to weaken tropical cyclones would be futile

J. Hlywiak and D. S. Nolan

This study investigates innovative methods to cool sea surface temperatures and mitigate the impact of tropical cyclones before they reach land. Despite the potential for significant impact, findings indicate that even large-scale cooling may only achieve marginal weakening of storms just prior to landfall. This research was conducted by James Hlywiak and David S. Nolan.

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Playback language: English

Index

Abstract

Proposals to use technology to cool sea surface temperatures to weaken tropical cyclones before landfall are examined. Applying ocean-mixing aware maximum potential intensity theory suggests artificial cooling could drastically weaken cyclones in high sea surface temperature and deep ocean mixed layer environments, especially for fast-moving storms. However, realistic mesoscale numerical simulations show that even massive artificially cooled ocean regions (up to 2.1 × 10<sup>4</sup> km<sup>3</sup>) only weaken a cyclone by 15% two days before landfall, and only under the most ideal conditions. This indicates that the theoretical upper bound is unreachable, even with vast resources.

Publisher

Communications Earth & Environment

Published On

Aug 19, 2022

Authors

James Hlywiak, David S. Nolan