Answer to "weather modification" question

WEATHER MODIFICATION (HURRICANES) -- Roland H. of Pompano Beach, FL wrote "...My friends and I were wondering why the Government doesn't invent a "liquid oxygen" missile that can be deployed underneath a major hurricane to cool down the water temperature. Wouldn't this cut off the Hurricane's breath? Would it be possible?"

Two days later, Robert F. of Lucasville, OH wrote: "...My idea is to stop the hurricanes before they reach inland....why not dump tons and tons of dry ice in the center of the hurricane to cool the water temperature down? I think this would perhaps slow the hurricane down enough to save lives and property damage." -- 9/25/99

Although both are correct that chilling a hurricane would "cut off its breath," the problem is that hurricanes don't exist alone. They are part of our global environmental system. So, before one modifies the hurricane, one has to assess the potential impacts of that modification (pros and cons) on everything it might affect.

Consider the following specific example. We know that hurricanes are "bad". They can cause incredible destruction, flooding, and even deaths and injuries (reference what happened in NC, VA, and NJ from Floyd in September 1999). On the other hand, hurricanes are good. The rainfall from Floyd significantly improved ground water, river, and reservoir levels across the middle Atlantic and New England regions where a severe drought was in progress. It all but ended the drought and associated water restrictions.

On the global scale, hurricanes have several purposes. One of their major roles is to help transport excess heat and moisture from the tropics to the polar regions. This helps to balance global temperatures and might even have positive "tempering" effects on wintertime jet stream strength, winter storm intensity, and other weather events.

So, if we were to destroy the hurricane early, these and other positive aspects might be negated.

There's also the problem of chilling the air and water where the hurricane is. What effect might this have on fish, birds, and other parts of the biological world in the vicinity of the storm?

And finally, what if such a "weapon" were created and got into the wrong hands? It might be used instead to create even worse storms.

For now, I think I'll stick with these storms as they are. They are definitely good, bad, and ugly (couldn't resist the play on an old movie title). But from the view of weather satellites, they are also beautiful.

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