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Bring Out the Anti-Hurricane Artillery |
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By Diego Cevallos*
Within
five years there may be methods available to manipulate and reduce
the devastating impacts of hurricanes like Ivan, Frances and Jeanne,
which have hit the Caribbean in recent weeks.
MEXICO CITY - To date, all of the weapons that
meteorologists and scientists have come up with to debilitate tropical
cyclones have failed. But research into ways to fight hurricanes
continues, and in five years there could be some important breakthroughs,
say experts.
The power of a hurricane can be equal to that of a 10-megaton nuclear
bomb every 20 minutes, and several have been thrashing the tropical
regions of the Americas. The latest is tropical storm Jeanne, which
veered north after causing intense flooding in Haiti that had killed
at least 250 people as of Monday.
Potential weapons against this natural phenomenon include the use
of a special liquid that prevents evaporation of seawater that feeds
the giant storms, the release of ash into the storm, and the employment
of silver iodide -- the only procedure that has been put to the
test.
''There is skepticism about the possibility of effectively controlling
the cyclones, but in five years we might know if it is a well-founded
skepticism or not,'' hurricane expert Ricardo Prieto, of the Mexican
Institute of Water Technology.
In theory and in laboratory experiments, scientists are working
with ''the micro-physics of clouds,'' a field that could produce
important clues about the manipulation of cyclones before 2010,
Prieto said.
While those studies continue in Mexico, the U.S. government is conducting
others, which include on-site observations and measurements of the
storms, using aircraft and satellites in an attempt to determine
how hurricanes behave.
Thanks to scientific advances, in the past 30 years there was a
great leap in tropical storm research, which made precise alerts
possible about when and where they are formed. However, so far there
is no way to manipulate the strength or direction that the storms
or hurricanes take.
Tropical storms and their more intense cousins, known in the Americas
as hurricanes, and in other parts of the world as 'baguio', typhoons
or 'Willy-willy', begin to form when the ocean temperatures in the
latitudes near the tropics increase, as occurs in the Western Hemisphere
between May and November.
Converging in the cyclone are winds and clouds of different temperatures
that spin at a high speed due to the rotation of the Earth. The
ever-changing patterns of movement cause strong gusts of wind and
storms with enormous destructive power.
In the 1960s, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) tried to weaken the cyclones by using aircraft to ''inject''
them with silver iodide, which theoretically would cause condensation
inside the storm, accelerating their life cycle and decline. The
normal life cycle of this meteorological phenomenon can reach two
weeks.
The plan, known as Project Stormfury, was tried on Hurricane Beulah
in 1963 and on Debbie in 1969, but the results were disappointing.
Another attempt at neutralizing these storms -- currently only in
the experimental phase -- focuses on creating a liquid that would
prevent the evaporation of ocean water where the cyclones form,
but this has also failed so far.
In the 1970s the idea emerged to release billions of ash particles,
created from the burning of petroleum, along the edges of the cyclone
to absorb the solar radiation and generate heat, which, it was hoped,
would deactivate the power of the storm. This theory has not yet
been put to the test.
''As long as there is not some sort of weapon against hurricanes,
all we can do is continue to coexist with them in an era in which
their frequency seems to be increasing, because already the Caribbean
is above the yearly average,'' Ricardo Sánchez, director for Latin
America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Environment Program
(UNEP), told Tierramérica.
Some scientists think this year's spate of storms is due to global
warming, a phenomenon attributed to the burning of fossil fuels
and their release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But there
is no consensus about the possible link between global warming and
the increased number of hurricanes this season.
According to Sánchez, for now what the countries of Central America
and the Caribbean should do -- as they are most affected by hurricanes
-- is work to reduce their vulnerability to the storms' destructive
force. They are particularly at risk because of the degradation
of soils, deforestation, unregulated urbanization and widespread
poverty.
With a deteriorated environment and millions of people living in
precarious settlements, natural phenomena multiply their destructive
capacity, as occurred in 1998 with Hurricane Mitch, which killed
10,000 people and left material damage worth more than six billion
dollars in its wake.
From 1970 to 2001, natural disasters caused 246,569 deaths in Latin
America and the Caribbean and directly affected another 144 million
people. In that period material losses reached 68.6 billion dollars.
Shaken by these tragedies, in the past few years the region has
made strides in improving civil defense against natural disasters,
facilitating faster evacuations and reaching the people affected
more quickly.
Cuba was able to evacuate some two million people last week to protect
them from Hurricane Ivan, one of the six most powerful storms since
1974. Mexico, Jamaica and other countries carried out similar efforts,
but Ivan's destructive force was such that the death toll surpassed
60.
Given the relatively tiny economies of the Caribbean and Central
America, hurricanes as big as Ivan cause enormous losses.
The small island nation of Grenada, for example, home to just over
100,000 inhabitants, saw nearly 90 percent of its buildings destroyed,
and the response capacity of the government and other organizations
was more than overwhelmed.
According to experts, Hurricane Mitch's passage through Central
America in 1998 set back the region's economic development by at
least a decade.
The UNEP's Sánchez says the international community should set up
''a global stabilization fund'' to help countries that are hit by
natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, drought or flooding.
However, he added, ''the region itself must invest more in prevention
and in restoring the deteriorated environment.''
Of the disaster-related loans and donations that reach Latin America
and the Caribbean, 90 percent goes towards assistance and reconstruction
efforts, and just 10 percent for prevention.
* Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent
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