Researchers Work to Tame Hurricane by Cloud Seeding

The environmental scientists from the University of Leeds are working towards taming one of the most destructive forces of earth the 'Hurricane', that form in warm tropical waters.

'Cloud Seeding' will weaken the hurricanes by decreasing the sea surface temperatures where hurricanes form, say researchers from University of Leeds. 

The relationship between the sea surface temperature and the energy associated was considered in this study. They plan to target the marine stratocumulus clouds, which cover an estimated quarter of the world's oceans in order to prevent the occurrence of hurricane forming.

 "Hurricanes derive their energy from the heat contained in the surface waters of the ocean," said Dr Alan Gadian from the University of Leeds. "If we are able to increase the amount of sunlight reflected by clouds above the hurricane development region then there will be less energy to feed the hurricanes."

Based on the Marine Cloud Brightening technique, an unmanned vehicle could spray minute droplets of seawater into the hurricane development region, a good fraction of which would rise into clouds above increasing the number of droplets cloud reflectivity and duration. During this process there is excess of sunlight that is reflected back into space thereby dropping the sea surface temperature.

On following this technique Gadian and his team learnt that this could reduce the power of developing hurricanes by one category.

"Data shows that over the last three decades hurricane intensity has increased in the Northern Atlantic, the Indian and South-West Pacific Oceans," said Gadian. "We simulated the impact of seeding on these three areas, with particular focus on the Atlantic hurricane months of August, September and October."

This method of targeting clouds definitely does reduce an average sea temperature by a few degrees, but it has a set of drawbacks too. The researchers noticed that this method in Atlantic could lead to a reduction in rainfall especially in the Amazon Basin.

Gadian concluded saying, "Much more research is needed and we are clear that cloud seeding should not be deployed until we are sure there will be no adverse consequences regarding rainfall. However if our calculations are correct, judicious seeding of maritime clouds could be invaluable for significantly reducing the destructive power of future hurricanes."