No-one’s assuming anything, all I’ve said for example is that I have not heard a good argument for ruling out that a hurricane could be disrupted by an atom bomb. Just saying the hurricane has much more energy is not a good (or at least not a complete) argument.
And neither is saying that adding energy to a system makes it more energetic. As a blanket statement, that claim is clearly false. If I blow out a candle flame I’m adding energy to the system, yet extinguishing it.
There is a nuance between kill and disrupt here. The scientific back of the envelope question was more clear. Would the bomb be able to disrupt the convection cell enough to make any difference? It does this in a very specific manner - it causes a halt to the descending air in the centre of the storm. This is important because a cyclonic storm is a positive feedback system - as it grows it create the conditions to intensify its strength. The question is - can this short term halting of the operation of the eye of the storm break the positive feedback loop for long enough for the storm to reduce in intensity - perhaps for long enough that the storm will impact a coastline at lower intensity than it otherwise would have. No doubt, left to its own devices in open ocean the storm would almost certainly rebuild - a big storm is the size of a continent. But the eye of the storm is what we are worried about. We may be able to cause the eye to grow larger - and thus weaken in local intensity for long enough that it would matter. Also, the location of the eye seems to be somewhat chaotic, it may be that we can disrupt things enough that the path moves a useful amount. Neither of these actions are directly challenging the total power of the storm.
Back of the envelope - total air mass in the eye, say a big storm has an eye of 50km diameter. Call the air mass 10km deep of equivalent STP air. Call it 2,000km[sup]3[/sup]. That is about 2x10[sup]9[/sup]kg of air. We need roughly 2x10[sup]12[/sup] J to raise this mass 1 K. Assume about 50% of the bomb’s energy is deposited in radiation, that couples into the air mass. So 4x10[sup]12[/sup]J for 1 K. So back of the envelope would suggest that a 1 megaton bomb would have the ability to heat the air mass dramatically. So much so that the descending air mass in the eye would be stopped for at least the time it takes for the height of the column to traverse the full height of the eye. That is probably about the best we can hope for with a single bomb. The rest of the energy is not going anywhere useful, and that that goes past the eye wall will be adding to the normal storm cell energy. But the unknown question is - will wrecking the descending air mass inside the eye wall cause at least a temporary halt to the positive feedback mechanism that makes a hurricane out of a very large low pressure system.
Like an Eye Wall replacement cycle artificially initiated … I like it … that would cut a Cat Five storm some, perhaps enough …
Power is essentially a momentary value – the rate of energy production/consumption. A light bulb produces 100 watts – at the moment of measurement. A car engine produces 300 horsepower – at the moment of measurement, etc. Those are both rates.
If one light bulb produces 100 watts and burns out in five seconds and another produces 200 watts and burns out in one second, you don’t compare the energy release using power. The power of one is 100 watts and the power of the other is 200 watts. That tells you nothing.
You compare the energy release using energy over time: 100 watts for five seconds is 500 watt seconds or 500 joules – THAT is energy, not power.
You typically don’t use power to compare “energy released over some period of time”. You use energy released over time to compare two entities. Power released over time is energy, it is not power. This is obvious from the units: watt second, kilowatt hour, etc.
Nobody really knows what would happen since the recent NOAA references were not based on models or any serious study. For those who studied it back in the 1950s and 60s, one theory was the central heat engine in the hurricane’s eye might be disrupted by a large detonation. This would engulf and entrain the hot air in the hurricane eye, forcing it upward into the stratosphere, and cooler less energetic air would rush in to replace it, thereby weakening the storm.
Nobody really knows if that would work but we now have the computational capacity to study it, although nobody has done so. Agencies study things all the time which they know will likely never happen, if nothing else for public service education. NASA got so many questions about why the Space Shuttle never went to the moon they commissioned a serious study of this, just to have an informed answer for those who kept asking: “Feasibility Analysis of Cislunar Flight Using the
Shuttle Orbiter” (Haynes, 1991): Feasibility analysis of cislunar flight using the Shuttle Orbiter - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)
NOAA or some independent weather researcher could do likewise for the “nuke a hurricane” question, but nobody has so far.
I agree think of the butterfly effect and a 50 megaton warhead as the butterfly. 
Or the next big SyFy blockbuster!
It certainly tells us more than nothing. Yes, energy is pretty much the key measure of energetic events. If I get hit by a bullet, the overall energy is important to know. But the momentum is also useful to know, and the “power” – the amount of energy per time, makes a difference.
If I get hit with a bullet, that transfers 500 Joules to my body…it makes a huge difference if that occurs over a period of 1/10 second…or five hours. (e.g., rubbing the bullet up and down on my skin to produce heat by friction.)
If we use a nuclear warhead against a hurricane, it does matter how fast the energy is distributed through the air. The power rate tells us (approximately) how much damage is being done to the air-stream structure. It’s like “impact” in physics: an instantaneous measure, or short-term measure can have a lot of meaning.
Slight hijack; with all the energy output by a hurricane would it ever make sense to create extremely large turbines to collect and transform that energy? Maybe on floating barges deployed into a hurricane’s path?
No.
Insufficient Sharks.
Tricky engineering: the hurricane’s forces are so huge, they’d be likely to tear apart anything you might use, unless you made it so darn big and solid that it wouldn’t be of any use in any winds or waves other than a hurricane!
Much more cost-effective to make collectors for typical wind/wave conditions, and then shut it all down and protect it when a hurricane strikes.
(It’s a little like saying, look at all the energy released in automobile accidents. If we could capture and harness that energy, it wouldn’t just go to waste. True…but, oh, the engineering!)
Now, what would really be useful, would be some way of extracting all that energy from the atmosphere and oceans before it builds up enough to become a hurricane. Though there would probably be some dire but unanticipated environmental impact from that.
Power by itself tells us nothing meaningful for purposes of this comparison. This is because power is a pure rate – it tells us nothing about how that rate is applied over time, which is energy.
A good example of this is a photographic strobe light. This one is 640 watt seconds (or joules) and has a minimum duration of 1/13000th of a second. That is 8.3 megawatts for that period: https://www.paulcbuff.com/e640.php
If someone told you light A is 8.3 megawatts and light B is 200 watts, that tells us nothing useful about which is the most energetic. It is missing the element of power over time, which is defined as energy.
How fast the energy is distributed is a factor but is not the point I was replying to. I was mainly addressing the statement “it’s better to use power instead of total energy released” in the comparison of a nuclear bomb to a hurricane. An H-bomb has incredible peak power but that tells us nothing useful in comparing to a hurricane. Much more meaningful is energy over time. Of course things like atmospheric energy coupling, hydrodynamic effects on eye wall circulation, etc. are also important but those require modeling to understand.
I’m curious, you began your example a few posts above by comparing the power of the two light bulbs, and said power by itself tells us nothing meaningful. If I may:
W[sub]100[/sub] = ∫[sub]0[/sub][sup]5[/sup] 100 J/s dt = 500 Joules,
W[sub]200[/sub] = ∫[sub]0[/sub][sup]1[/sup] 200 J/s dt = 200 Joules and
W[sub]P[/sub] = ∫ P dt = Pt + C … Where W = energy transfer (or work), P = power and C = 0 (and is added for the purists)
So, as you can see, when calculating energy transfer, we have to know the power AND we have to know how long this power is applied. The same with comparing energy transfer, we have to know both power and time interval. The nuke is more powerful, but we’re using a very short time interval; the hurricane is just going to chug on along.
As I’ve pointed out above, we have know power before we can know energy released. You can’t say a nuke’s peak power tells us nothing, with time it tells us energy released.
So, if we agree that energy released is what we should use to compare, could you please make that comparison. In what way would the nuke disrupt the hurricane?
I wouldn’t know what to do with 6 x 10[sup]14[/sup] Watts … refine aluminum … set up some cyclotrons … do a shitload of welding? Jamaica has a lot of bauxite and they get hit with hurricanes … as soon as we’re done building this nuke we can head over and start digging …
Yes we must know that, not just power. Power and how long it’s applied IS energy, which is why I was emphasizing that, as opposed to just comparing based on power.
Power applied for an interval of time IS energy – by definition.
Yes which is why comparing based only on power is not sufficient. Power is a simple rate which tells us nothing about the duration. Rather it’s more meaningful to compare based on energy expended over some time interval.
Power by itself tells us nothing. Power over time IS energy which is why I was recommending that as a basis for comparison, not just power.
We have no idea whether a nuke will disrupt a hurricane. The point is definitive, non-qualified statements have been made that it will NOT disrupt a hurricane based simply on back-of-the-envelope Jr. High School-type math. It has not been modeled, and apparently the people making those statements have not even read the published literature.
The 50 megaton Russian Tsar Bomba released 2.09E17 joules of energy, or 5.8 times the total energy the entire hurricane releases each minute. That nuclear bomb released more energy than an entire hurricane releases over five minutes. It is apparently possible to build a fusion bomb which releases 1,000 times that much energy (2.09E20 joules), which is more than the entire hurricane releases in four days.
This does not mean it will work, or is practical. Rather that the simplistic approach of comparing the energy release of a small nuclear bomb to the cumulative energy release of a hurricane over a long period is not revealing or necessarily relevant. The original concept was based on displacing higher-temperature air in the eye region, not somehow blowing the hurricane apart. Unfortunately the NOAA people who published those simplified calculations apparently never read the original research.
I have to disagree with you here. If I have 500 Joules of electric energy, by your definition: 0 Watts x 5 seconds = 0 Joules … that’s plainly not the case, I still have my 500 Joules of electric energy. I put a 100 Watt bulb across the terminals for 2 seconds: 100 Watts x 2 seconds = 200 Joules … again wrong, I still have my 500 joules of energy, 300 J of electric energy and 200 J of radiative energy.
What is true is that I have converted some of my energy, at 100 Watts for 2 seconds = 200 Joules … that’s not energy, that’s energy converted (or energy transferred). The amount of beer I just tossed down my throat isn’t the definition of beer, it’s just the measure of how much beer I just swallowed.
There’s no factual answer to this general question. However, there is room for reasoned speculation. Even if any modeling was done, it’s not going to be published … those computer simulations of nukes going off are … you know … tightly held military secrets. NOAA wouldn’t be the people to ask about nuclear explosions, I don’t know who you’d ask, might be easier just speculate here.
The nuke releases a lot of energy, but that’s half the story, where does the energy go? That’s an intriguing question, I’d like to know what a gamma ray burst would do, not to mention 2,000ºC air at 100% RH … exceptional buoyant, I don’t blame the researcher for not finishing the math.
That power produced or consumed for an interval of time is energy can be seen from the very nomenclature used: watt-second, kilowatt-hour, etc. IOW one watt for one second or two watts for 1/2 second = one watt-second = one joule. Those are units of energy, whereas power by itself is a pure rate which tells us nothing about energy.
The 500 joules you mentioned were produced somehow, and at a certain rate (ie, power). Whenever that was produced, it was energy per unit time (a rate) sustained over some time interval. E.g, 500 joules per second = 500 watts. If that process continued for one second it would produce 500 watt-seconds (or joules) of energy.
After having produced and stored 500 joules (at some rate, or power), expending that at 0 watts x 5 seconds consumes no energy. This doesn’t change the fact that the joules (or watt-seconds) of energy got there in the 1st place by power over time, which accurately reflects the amount of stored energy (of course excluding losses).
What you do with the stored energy doesn’t change the fact that total amount was produced by power over time, the product of which reflects that total. Expending 100 watts for 2 seconds consumes 200 watt-seconds or 200 joules of energy – in that operation. Power over a time interval is energy, and can be seen from the equation P = E/t or E = P*t. In this case 100 watts for 2 seconds accurately reflects the amount of energy expended – in that operation.
The fact that from a physics standpoint, energy cannot truly be created or destroyed is beside the point. We still refer to energy “consumption” and “production” from a practical engineering standpoint.
Yes that is my point. The problem is the NOAA and other typical answers for this topic are NOT presented as speculation, they are presented as a confident, definitive, cut-and-dried answer: TCFAQ C5c) Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking
The sensitive part of nuclear weapon simulation is the initial implosion phase and physics affects of fusion during the first microsecond. That is used for weapon design and validation in lieu of testing. None of that is needed for modeling how the later-stage energy release interacts with a storm. The total energy release, flux intensity, relative proportion of thermal vs blast vs radiation are all well known, at least with sufficient accuracy to model a storm system.
Astronomers frequently model similar things such asteroid impacts on earth and effects on weather/climate, etc. Sometimes running a sophisticated numerical model reveals things that simple calculations do not: It Looks Like an Asteroid Strike Can't Cause a Worldwide, Dinosaur-Killing Firestorm - Universe Today
Ah … I see why we disagree then … conservation of energy is my point. I’m not comparing nukes with hurricanes, I’m combining them. To do so we must comply with the Laws of Thermodynamics at all times. If energy isn’t being conserved, then it’s not a hurricane.