Effect of a nuclear bomb inside of a tornado

My 11 y.o. son asked me what would happen if a warhead from a Davy Crockett recoilless rifle (W54 warhead at .01 kt, IIRC) were to be detonated inside of a, say, F3 tornado. I take that to mean halfway between ground level and the cloud. I think the intense heat might dissipate the cloud, but I have no idea what would happen, given that the tornado is so much more powerful. What might larger warheads do?

Thanks,
Rob

20,000 pounds of TNT would most likely disrupt an F-3 tornado, however it might not be enough to stop it from re-forming again … thunderstorms that generate tornadoes are fairly good sized in comparison and this 0.01 kT explosion wouldn’t tear that apart …

10 kT would probably waste the tornado and the thunderstorm … but not likely to change the environment that spawned the thunderstorm to begin with …

A dozen 50 MT “Tzar” bombs along the frontal system could break up the environment for a short time … but the front would set up again and start spawning tornadic thunderstorms again …

Nuclear weapons are very very powerful for a very very short period of time … prevailing winds are much much less powerful but carry on for millions of years …

Perhaps this is worth some more careful analysis. You aren’t going to do anything much to a hurricane unless you have a truckful of antimatter, but a tornado is orders of magnitude smaller.

I found a citation for the energy in an F-3 tornado … “Tornado energy” … and this give ≈ 3 x 10[sup]12[/sup] Joules … 1 kT of TNT ≈ 4 x 10[sup]12[/sup] …

Thanx for the heads up, Riemann, I think my previous post is overstated … 10kT to disrupt the tornado … 50 MT to disrupt the thunderstorm … we’ll need anti-matter to tear up the front …

The order of magnitude of kinetic energy of a tornado in the EF3 to EF4 range (averaging 20 to 50 TJ) is actually pretty comparable to the TNT equivalent yield of a moderate size nuclear weapon. 1 kT[SUB]TNTeq[/SUB] is 4.184 TJ, so while the W54 warhead (yield from 0.01 to 1 1 kT[SUB]TNTeq[/SUB]) is smaller, it is large enough that there would certainly be some effect. A larger weapon, such as the W87 (estimated yield from 300 to 450 kT[SUB]TNTeq[/SUB]) would be about 1300 to 1800 TJ, dwarfing an EF3 by nearly an order of mangitude.

Of course, the form of energy in a tornado and a nuclear weapon are very differing. In a tornado, the kinetic energy is from the vortex formed by mesocyclone which is pulled down to the surface by collecting a mass of cool, wet air. The resulting funnel is supported by differential shear in winds at the upper troposphere which sustain the rear flank downdraft (RFD); since the cool air is too heavy to go further up into the stratosphere, it spreads laterially, forming the characteristic ‘anvil’ and wall cloud, and feeding the vortex, which sheds water as it ascends and creates a self-sustaining dynamic structure. A nuclear weapon, on the other hand, releases its energy in the form of high energy X-rays and neutrons; most weapons are designed to maximize X-ray production, which is absorbed by the atmosphere and produces the thermal pulse and blast wave. The heated air then expands and rises, forming the characteristic mushroom shape and flattened plate shape as it reaches the stratosphere. As it interacts with flow in the troposphere it will also form a kind of anvil shape not dissimilar to a tornado anvil, albeit without the more complex structure. If it ignites material on the ground, that may create a firestorm which feeds the updraft.

My totally off-the-cuff guess is that detonating a multi-kiloton nuclear weapon within the vortex of a tornado would cause the tornado to expel water at an accelerated rate and would cause hot ail to rise up into the anvil, disrupting the RFD and causing the vortex to weaken or collapse. Although the heating from a nuclear detonation happens almost instantly in the area affected by the thermal pulse, the heat energy will remain until it can disperse as wind flow or ejecting more energetic air particles into the stratosphere.

Stranger

A hurricane with 90 mph winds at landfall will dissipate about 130,000 TJ of energy per day, and that is a small fraction of the energy actually driving the hurricane by about a factor of 300 to 400. The amount of energy equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane would be somewhere on the order of 10,000 MT[SUB]TNTeq[/SUB].

Stranger