Weather Watch: Bill Gates sets his sights on hurricane control

Plenty of things in our lives seem pointless... some might say it's the on-ramp traffic lights in Auckland.... others might say TV One's weather cams that run at 6:20pm during winter showing us the current weather conditions in each main centre even though it's pitch black and we can't see a thing....and others...well they might think investing money in controlling hurricanes is a pretty pointless...but it's just what Microsoft founder Bill Gates has in the pipelines. I struggled to find a press release about it and it seems it's all being done very secretly - but US website USATODAY.COM recently published a story on this incredible idea.

"Five U.S. Patent and Trade Office patent applications, made public on July 9, propose slowing hurricanes by pumping cold, deep-ocean water in their paths from barges. If issued, the patents offer 18 years of legal rights to the idea for Gates and co-inventors, including climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington" says the website. "The patents describe a system for strategically placing turbine-equipped barges in the path of storms to chill sea surfaces with cold water pumped from the depths".

"Given the scope of the applications, "I suspect these will have a lengthy stay in the examiner's office. They are talking about some interesting issues here," says patent expert Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog.com"

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Caldeira declined to comment on the patents - which is why I struggled to find any press release.

The idea behind humans trying to control the weather isn't new. During the 2008 Olympics China actually guaranteed dry weather for the opening ceremony. At the time of the Olympics they were spending 50 million US dollars a year as part of their "weather modification project".

The project covers drought affected areas but also covered Beijing. The Chinese Government sent rockets into the sky to make the clouds rain... the idea being that if any rain clouds formed they would bombard them until the rain 'dried up' and dry clouds passed over Beijing.

America has also dabbled in "cloud seeding". In drought affected areas the government is seeding clouds to create rain. In airports prone to fog they are experimenting with ways to reduce the amount of fog and in states affected by large hail storms trials are being performed to reduce the size of hail.

See my blog last year about Cloud Seeding.

The US Government also tried cloud seeding with hurricanes but feared that they could actually make a hurricane worse...and that's hardly going to win you an election if you tried to stop Hurricane Katrina and instead made it worse...and lets face it, with Bush in charge at the time the 'worse case scenario' was probably the 'most likely' one.

But what Bill Gates is proposing isn't to touch the sky - instead, he wants to remove the fuel that creates hurricanes - the warm ocean below.

USATODAY reports that by cutting the sea surface temperature by 4.5 degrees under the eye of a hurricane it would actually kill the storm.

Says climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in State College: "Needless to say, there is a whole lot of scepticism about this among tropical meteorologists. But it's not so ridiculous that I would actually dismiss it out of hand. There is certainly an important role of upper ocean mixing on tropical cyclone behaviour."

This year it appears El Nino is forming and this creates warmer waters around the equator near South America. Now the possible El Nino will probably be too late arriving to affect the outcome of this years Atlantic Hurricane season but predictions are for a season with an average number of tropical storms. So far it's been very quiet however August is the 'true' beginning of the season. Gates has got all the money to fund this and after the complete devastation of Hurricane Katrina many Americans will be keen to look at anything that could minimise the impact of a hurricane. Of course, it would be on such a grand scale to weaken a hurricane that the cost of 'easing' a storm may be greater than the cost of the damage. Mind you, you can't easily put a dollar number on a human life...you just have to work out whether that money is best spent on easing the severity of a hurricane, or perhaps better forecasting equipment and better evacuation plans.

You can read the full article from USATODAY here.

Finally - back to New Zealand for a bit - have you noticed the jump in temperatures lately? While it might not be overly warm it's certainly mild compared to the past few months. We're keen to hear whether you think spring has arrived early this year where you live - cast your vote in our Poll.

And to have your say on Bill Gates' idea - post a comment below. I'm sure it'll stir up a few emotions in some.

Top: Software icon Bill Gates could be lining up the weather as his next conquest. Photo / AP