Weather Modification

[ScottieIWU]

An article in the Chicago Tribune today featured a company, Dyn-o-Mat, that developed a super-absorbant polymer that they intend to eventually use to stop hurricanes. The idea is to load up some airplanes with the gel, dump it over a hurricane and slow it down, if not stop it completely.

There have been a few impressive tests of the polymer in which clouds have been taken off the radar or the radar was definitely altered after the dumping of the powder. The company is going to begin using computer models to figure out how much powder would be needed and where it would have to be applied to affect or stop a hurricane.

If this goes through, the company would have the ability to prevent devestating hurricanes such as Katrina or Andrew.

For some videos and information, visit the Dyn-o-mat site (http://www.dynomat.com/dynostorm.html).

So, looks like weather modification is something that's actually feasible. Kind of sweet, science uber alles.

Addendum: I was looking up other forms of weather modification, generally "cloud seeding." Checking out the wikipedia article on weather modification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_modification) is kind of interesting, as I didn't even know things like this were happening.

Unfortunately, the field is plagued by a general lack of the scientific method and usually relies on anecdotal evidence or unverifiable facts. However, as a pseudoscience it seems like something that would be interesting to research in a more rigid manner, that way we can get an idea of if the stuff actually works.

Thoughts?

[Ubergopher]

That sounds like an interesting theory I'm just sort of worried at the thought of dumping tons and tons of gel in an ocean. I'm guessing that there'd be some sort of side effec that we can't determine.

[CrazyTom]

Indeed, they'd have to make the polymer or whatever biodegradable and nontoxic when it biodegrades or earlier - otherwise the cleanup operation could have far more damaging effects than the Hurricane itself would have originally caused. Still, I can't help thinking that this weather alteration could screw up the ecosystem elswhere on earth - preventing winds from carrying seeds. I know that's a lame example, but something so simple would in fact have far-reaching consequences. Still, I guess it's worthy of research to find it out it's feasibly. I've never experienced a hurricane so I don't know how bad they are - I've only seen pictures of the aftermath and several naff films... though 'The Day After Tomorrow' was pretty good.

[GenocideAlive]

Well, in theory if we had some sort of "more expensive" cleanup than after Katrina or whatever, it'd still be worth it because we'd save tons of priceless lives. However, it usually tends to work out that we do only what we have to rather than what we should, so you're probably right. We'd do a halfassed job of cleanup and deal some sort of damage to our ecosystem that will further our screwed up problems.

[Doombringer64]

The product to date has proven to be non-toxic and will not affect our eco systems or our environment.
Hooray for reading a lost art.

[Nuts]

Most meteorologists consider this to be junk science.

[sololop]

Yeah. That could work.. but stopping global warming is better. Where I live, we used to get only at MOST very tail-ends of weak trropical storms. But three years ago, boom. a class 3 hurricane comes. (Juan) The gell will ony be useful for a few years, if it happens. If the oceans keep warming hurricanes are just going to get too big for anything to handle. I say in about 15 years, hurricanes are going to be 2x as powerful as another hurricane like Katrina for example. Imagine a hurricane the size of india rolling up the atlantic coast. "Gell" would be useless.