Would it be possible to 'dissolve' a hurricane with a nuclear weapon?

[ferrelhadley]

A hurricane is driven by pressure differences. The key is that a stable pattern of large amounts of moist air are sucked up near the eye and much of the water vapour in that air undergoes phase transition to liquid water, this releases huge amounts of heat that keep the air pressure at the top of the eye lower than the rest of that near the tropopause.

Far from being indestructible, cyclones can be broken up by dryer air or windshear, vertical movement of wind.


A large nuclear weapon detonated in the upper troposphere would draw in air from a large area, pulling it up towards the top of the troposphere,

As this air gained altitude it would cool and the water vapour would also undergo phase change raising the temperature of the local atmosphere relative to that altitude, lowering the pressure and in effect competing with the cyclone for its fuel, moist air.

The blast would also vapourise a large amount of water below the immediate detonation that would also serve as fuel for a low pressure area in the upper troposphere.

Also the huge temperatures of the initial blast would suck up much more matter than could be sustainably held in the upper atmosphere would would likely create large amounts of localised turbulence as the matter (mostly air) fell back to lower altitudes, possibly dragging drying, stratospheric air with it.

Personally I suspect it would require actual computer modelling to see what the possible results for dropping a nuclear bomb near a hurricane would be. I can think of so many variable that I think it would take a real long hard look to come to the answers, and there would be a wide variety depending on storm and bomb strength.

 

[two sheds]

Better solution if it works - people finally listening to Stephen Salter perhaps.
The man who would stop hurricanes with car tyres

British scientist Stephen Salter and Bill Gates patent scheme to prevent huge storms

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/nov/04/stephen-salter-tyre-hurricane-sandy

 

[ferrelhadley]

Better solution if it works - people finally listening to Stephen Salter perhaps.
The man who would stop hurricanes with car tyres

British scientist Stephen Salter and Bill Gates patent scheme to prevent huge storms

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/nov/04/stephen-salter-tyre-hurricane-sandy

Cooler water is less efficient at radiating energy so by seqestering the warmer water in the deeper ocean you would slow the rate at which the region lost energy, building up energy in the deeper waters.

You would seriously alter the thermohaline balance locally with deeper cooler water being replaced with warmer water that through evaporation is liable to be pretty dense.

You will be warming the ocean where huge amounts of CO2 are stored, this will release some of them as warmer water holds less gas.

You risk warming currents that pass clatherates, possibly destabilising them.

If the warm water is not flushed fully it will likely build up and in the coming decades, as cyclones pass over head, instead of stirring the cooler water, they will simply stir the warmer water, this may mean that you are simply reducing current hurricane intensity for suped up hurricanes is decades to come.

Cooler water will evaporate less. Given this is already a drought prone region and droughts can be far more destructive than hurricanes you are liable to have one hell of a fight on your hands from farmers groups.

It may work, but Id not be investing in the project myself.