Why don't we nuke Rita?

Wouldn't that put a stop to her?

cp #5

crit PRO wrote:
Wouldn't that put a stop to her?




Dumbass -


That would be an interesting experiment.

It wouldn't stop the hurricane though. A nuke in the eye, especially if
it was under water, would cause the water to heat up and the resultant
rise in water temperature along with the mushroom cloud rising into the
air would add energy to the hurricane, speeding up its "whirpool"
effect and increasing the velocity of the winds.

The wind could very well temporarily go up really, really high. I think
we should try it.


thanks,

K. Gringioni.

Kurgan Gringioni says...

It wouldn't stop the hurricane though. A nuke in the eye, especially if
it was under water, would cause the water to heat up and the resultant
rise in water temperature along with the mushroom cloud rising into the
air would add energy to the hurricane, speeding up its "whirpool"
effect and increasing the velocity of the winds.

The wind could very well temporarily go up really, really high. I think
we should try it.

I hereby authorize you to personally deliver it in this here row-boat. It's a
manually-detonated bomb, so hasta lavista, dumbass!

crit PRO wrote:
Wouldn't that put a stop to her?

Kurgan Gringioni wrote:
The wind could very well temporarily go up really, really high. I think
we should try it.

Goody, lets do it while boy george is nearby.

Donald Munro wrote:
crit PRO wrote:

Wouldn't that put a stop to her?


Kurgan Gringioni wrote:

The wind could very well temporarily go up really, really high. I think
we should try it.


Goody, lets do it while boy george is nearby.


Maybe he could play the part that Slim Pickens played in "Dr.
Strangelove". I think the part would fit him well.

Wouldn't that put a stop to her?

That came up during dinner last night. Probably the most-effective use of a
nuke (for doing damage to a Hurricane) might be to figure out if you could
detonate it far below the surface of the gulf, in a manner that would bring
up the colder water from below. Hurricane's feed off warm water, so anything
you can do to bring down the temperature might have a positive effect.

Or maybe instead of bringing 20,000 tons (or whatever it was) of ice into
New Orleans for people, just dump it into the Gulf. Would probably have as
much effect as my Northern California college friends 30 years ago, who made
a trip to the aqueduct so they could pee into the water going to Southern
California.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Kurgan Gringioni wrote:


crit PRO wrote:
Wouldn't that put a stop to her?




Dumbass -


That would be an interesting experiment.

It wouldn't stop the hurricane though. A nuke in the eye, especially if
it was under water, would cause the water to heat up and the resultant
rise in water temperature along with the mushroom cloud rising into the
air would add energy to the hurricane, speeding up its "whirpool"
effect and increasing the velocity of the winds.

The wind could very well temporarily go up really, really high. I think
we should try it.


thanks,

K. Gringioni.


Not quite. You need to do the math. Your typical large nuke might release
around 20 tera-Joules (TJ) in a fraction of a second. Divide that energy
into the typical blast radius of make 10 km and a typical mixed
layer depth of 100 m (assuming all that energy will be converted directly
into heat (which is isn't)) and you get a relatively small increase in
sea surface temperature. And the atmospheric thermal plume of a bomb burst
is teeny tiny compared to the total area of a hurricane so it is already
vaporizing more water than the bomb burst.

You can think of it in another way by looking at the energy dynamics. The
average power required to sustain a hurricane is on order of 1.5 tera-Watts
(i.e., 1.5 TJ/s) and the energy it releases in the form of rain is around
600 tera-Watts (i.e., 600 TJ/s). So every minute (or so) a hurricane
dissipates 30 times more energy than one big bomb and one big bomb would
only provide enough energy for 20 minutes of hurricane force winds.
Therefore, while the instantaneous power output of a nuclear explosion
might be larger than a hurricane, over time it would do diddly unless you
set off maybe a 20 megaton bomb inside the core every 15 minutes or so.
And then you wouldn't see a huge increase in wind speed since there isn't a
linear relation between wind and power (storms get bigger in radius as the
wind speed increases so it takes more power to get the wind speed up).

We get jaded by looking at satellite images of cyclones but it is important
to remember they are huge. Aircraft photos taken inside the eye show how
immense these systems are. In some cases, counter-rotating mesoscale
vortices are observed in the eye and, vertical wind shear in clouds has
been measured with dropsondes to be on order of a hundred meters/sec
(enough to make the dropsondes ascend instead of descend). Dropping a bomb
in the eye of a large storm would be like dropping a thimble of gasoline on
a fire. Fun to do if you are easily amused but not particularly impressive
in the long run.

People have speculated that you might be able to modulate a hurricane by
putting surfactant on the ocean surface and decreasing the latent heat
flux. However, scientists can't decide whether it might work but is a
really bad idea so it shouldn't be tried or whether it can't possibly work
so it is a really bad idea that needn't be tried.

sigh Off topic again. I like bicycle racing, really I do.

--
Bill Asher

Kurgan Gringioni wrote:
: crit PRO wrote:
: Wouldn't that put a stop to her?
:
:
:
:
: Dumbass -
:
:
: That would be an interesting experiment.
:
: It wouldn't stop the hurricane though. A nuke in the eye, especially
: if it was under water, would cause the water to heat up and the
: resultant rise in water temperature along with the mushroom cloud
: rising into the air would add energy to the hurricane, speeding up
: its "whirpool" effect and increasing the velocity of the winds.
:
: The wind could very well temporarily go up really, really high. I
: think we should try it.

How do you know that's what will happen? It might disrupt the whirpool
effect. Done any simulations lately, Dumbass?

One other problem is the winds would do a good job dispersing all that
radiation. But then again, they are just poor black folk, so that
could be the best thing for them really...at least Barbara Bush might
think so. I mean they could mutate into wealthy Americans who play
tennis, ruin businesses and eventually become president.

CH


William Asher wrote:
Kurgan Gringioni wrote:


crit PRO wrote:
Wouldn't that put a stop to her?




Dumbass -


That would be an interesting experiment.

It wouldn't stop the hurricane though. A nuke in the eye, especially if
it was under water, would cause the water to heat up and the resultant
rise in water temperature along with the mushroom cloud rising into the
air would add energy to the hurricane, speeding up its "whirpool"
effect and increasing the velocity of the winds.

The wind could very well temporarily go up really, really high. I think
we should try it.


thanks,

K. Gringioni.


Not quite. You need to do the math. Your typical large nuke might release
around 20 tera-Joules (TJ) in a fraction of a second. Divide that energy
into the typical blast radius of make 10 km and a typical mixed
layer depth of 100 m (assuming all that energy will be converted directly
into heat (which is isn't)) and you get a relatively small increase in
sea surface temperature. And the atmospheric thermal plume of a bomb burst
is teeny tiny compared to the total area of a hurricane so it is already
vaporizing more water than the bomb burst.

You can think of it in another way by looking at the energy dynamics. The
average power required to sustain a hurricane is on order of 1.5 tera-Watts
(i.e., 1.5 TJ/s) and the energy it releases in the form of rain is around
600 tera-Watts (i.e., 600 TJ/s). So every minute (or so) a hurricane
dissipates 30 times more energy than one big bomb and one big bomb would
only provide enough energy for 20 minutes of hurricane force winds.
Therefore, while the instantaneous power output of a nuclear explosion
might be larger than a hurricane, over time it would do diddly unless you
set off maybe a 20 megaton bomb inside the core every 15 minutes or so.
And then you wouldn't see a huge increase in wind speed since there isn't a
linear relation between wind and power (storms get bigger in radius as the
wind speed increases so it takes more power to get the wind speed up).

We get jaded by looking at satellite images of cyclones but it is important
to remember they are huge. Aircraft photos taken inside the eye show how
immense these systems are. In some cases, counter-rotating mesoscale
vortices are observed in the eye and, vertical wind shear in clouds has
been measured with dropsondes to be on order of a hundred meters/sec
(enough to make the dropsondes ascend instead of descend). Dropping a bomb
in the eye of a large storm would be like dropping a thimble of gasoline on
a fire. Fun to do if you are easily amused but not particularly impressive
in the long run.

People have speculated that you might be able to modulate a hurricane by
putting surfactant on the ocean surface and decreasing the latent heat
flux. However, scientists can't decide whether it might work but is a
really bad idea so it shouldn't be tried or whether it can't possibly work
so it is a really bad idea that needn't be tried.

sigh Off topic again. I like bicycle racing, really I do.

--
Bill Asher

How about: Don't build your house next to the ocean, and if you do,
don't ask us to pay to rebuild it.