[ExI] How to tame hurricanes

[BillK]

Offshore Wind Farms Could Protect Cities from Hurricanes
Published: December 9th, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — Giant offshore wind farms could do more than provide
electricity for major cities. They could suck the life and the power
out of hurricanes barrelling toward those cities, too, according to
Stanford University research presented Monday at the American
Geophysical Union fall meeting.

<http://www.climatecentral.org/news/offshore-wind-farms-could-protect-cities-from-hurricanes-16813>

Quote:
Stanford civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Z.
Jacobson and his research team found that if it was feasible to build
tens of thousands of wind power turbines off the shores of some of
America’s cities most vulnerable to extreme weather, those cities
would see lower wind speeds and less severe storm surges from
approaching hurricanes.

The researchers imagined what would have happened if a massive wall of
tens of thousands of wind turbines had been built before hurricanes
Katrina and Sandy and ran computer simulations of both storms with and
without offshore turbines constructed in their paths.

They concluded that the wind turbines could have sapped Katrina of so
much energy that wind speeds would have been reduced by up to 50
percent at landfall and the hurricane's storm surge could have been
reduced by about 72 percent, Jacobson said. It also would have
generated 0.45 terawatts of wind power.
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It sounds as though he is serious about this proposal.
One obvious problem is that hurricanes tend to destroy wind turbines.
But presumably he can strengthen them and control the gearing to avoid
excess speed.

BillK