Scientists’ Efforts To Modify Hurricanes

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32382, 22 August 1970, Page 5

Scientists’ Efforts To Modify Hurricanes

WASHINGTON. Outstanding environmental scientists in the United States are attempting to modify or control cyclonic storms known in the Pacific as typhoons, in the Caribbean and Atlantic areas as hurricanes and in the Indian Ocean as willy-nillies.

With sophisticated modern equipment including satellites, aircraft, computers, and other modem devices, scientists of the Environmental Science Services Administration (E.S.S.A.) with headquarters in Washington are doing battle with storms all over the world.

Now for the first time in world history, these scientists report, there is hope for modifying if not controlling such storms which wreck havoc to life and property over wide areas.

Typhoons and hurricanes no longer strike without warning, thanks to global weather-patrolling satellites that monitor the heavens and furnish alerts, in the Pacific a satellite moves over the Equator at an altitude of 22,000 miles, obtaining a good over-all photographic view of the entire hemisphere. In the Pacific, storms usually originate south-east of Hawaii. They peak in the auumn but are a threat the year round. They are first' sighted as an amorphous blob of cloudiness which the experts call t’upical depressions and track west, picking up momentum. Satellites flash these developments to the joint U.S. Navy-Air Force Typhoon Warning Centre on Guam. Reconnaissance planes immediately go into action, tracking the progress and direction of the storm until it strikes a land area or dissipates itself over the ocean. Pacific storm formations have a pattern of travelling west, sometimes for several thousand miles, before veering to the north. Advance Warnings With the information provided by the reconnaissance planes and satellites, some of which are equipped with highly sophisticated infra-red type cameras permitting complete night-time observation, areas in the path of the gathering storm get advance warnings. Ships at sea are diverted from the danger path and coastal areas with large populations alerted—often days in advance. r In the past, a number of Asian countries, including the Republic of the Philippines, Republic of China, Hong Kong, Japan and Okinawa, together with the Chinese mainland, have borne the brunt of devastat- - ing tropical typhoons. With the aid of modem equipment and continuous reconnaissance activity, it is hoped that in the future much of this heavy loss of life, suffering and , tremendous property destruction can be avoided. Characteristic of the Pacific typhoons are the tremendous

amount of heat they generate as the “open eye” of the storm moves along with its encircling bands of broiling air. From the original tropical' depressions with maximum winds of about 33 knots, they expand into storm fronts packing winds of 34 to 64 knots. Typhoons pack more power than hurricanes and Pacific warning experts say that many have been rendered harmless when they hit the mountainous Vietnam coastline. Founded In 1965 E.S.S.A. came into existence on July 13, 1965, although its history dates back to 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson recommended creation of a survey of the eastern coast with only a $50,000 budget In 1965, the then President Johnson proposed the establishment of E.S.S.A., consolidating the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Weather Bureau and the Central Radio and Propagation Laboratory into the now Environmental Science Services Administration.

In the field of seismology, the Coast and Geodetic Survey gets weather information from approximately 1000 stations throughout the world. Perhaps the most far-reach-ing international programme is the satellite triangulation project conducted in co-opera-tion with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Defence - setting up 36 stations uniformly spaced around the world, tying together all geodetic data. Another E.S.S.A. effort in the South Atlantic and .Caribbean Sea is the seeding of hurricanes with silver iodide “massively and repeatedly” by high-flying aeroplanes this summer and autumn.

This effort is called “project stormfury” and it began on July 23, the day that Becky, the season’s first tropical storm posing a possible hurricane threat to the United States, spent itself at sea. The hurricane-taming effort will continue through to October 31.

During this period, Navy and Air Force aircraft on 48-hour alert will seed any mature hurricane that appears in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean or adjacent areas of the Atlantic.

“Project Stormfury,” a yearly effort since 1963, has advanced to the point where scientists believe they are on the verge of breakthrough in control of severe tropical storms. Success could come this year. Improved theory of hurricane dynamics and 1969 tests suggest that seeding around, not in a storm’s ring of maximum winds, tends to disperse its energy over a wider area and reduce its intensity. In fact, scientists announced after seeding hurricane Debbie on two occasions in August, 1969, that maximum winds fell from 182 kilometres an hour to 126 kilometres an hour and from 183 kilometres an hour to 156 kilometres an hour, decreases of 31 and 15 per cent, respectively. Dr R. C. Gentry, head of the project and director of E.S.S.A.’s Hurricane Research Laboratory, says a 20 per cent reduction in wind speed amounts to a 40 per cent reduction . in a hurricane’s force—the cause of damage and destruction. Chances Improved Such a reduction would give a far better chance of survival to inhabitants who do not have time to evacuate such areas and most improvements could withstand the reduced impact, he said. This year’s experiments, more of them and with larger drops of silver iodide, will be carried out to confirm the 1969 findings, for there is a possibility Debbie’s drop in wind intensity occurred naturally. Repeated demonstrations this year that silver iodide drops do trim a hurricane’s force could lead to projects within the next several years to modify hurricanes threatening populated areas. Also Success in . the current Atlantic and Caribbean efforts could lead to a broader programme to include similar seeding of Pacific typhoons. Discussing E.S.S.A.’s efforts to blunt and weaken the thrust of typhoons, hurricanes and other severe storms, Dr Robert M. White, E.S.S.A. administrator, said “I cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of weather modification both to the United States and to the world at large.” Citing the “tremendous scientific and technological achievement” emerging from such a development, Dr White declared “we would be able to increase the pace of economic growth and Improve the well-being of people everywhere in ways and to a degree that are now inconceivable.” United States Information Service.

“The bed, my friend, is our whole life,” wrote Guy de Maupassant, and indeed about a third of a normal human life—including the beginning and usually the end of it —is spent in bed. Thus it was no trivial matter when the British bedding industry announced recently that the size of the standard bed will be increased early next year in acknowledgement that betterfed populations, at least in the British Isles, are growing larger. No doubt other countries, including New / Zealand, will follow Britain, for “king-size” beds have already been on the market in Australia and parts of New Zealand for some time and suitable linen and blankets to fit them are slowly becoming available. The bedding industry in Britain is one of the leaders in the change to metric measure, which is expected to be completed in all sections of British industry by 1975. Metric measure for beds will become standard at the same time as the size increase next February, and some textile fibres and fabrics will be supplied to commercial users in metric measure at the same time. Bed sizes in Britain will increase by 3in in length and 6in in width. Under the new measure double beds will be 6ft 6in long and sft wide compared with 6ft 3in by 4ft 6in at present In metric measure the new size will be approximately 1.95 metres by 1.52 metres.

Large beds have always fascinated the English. Shakespeare, in “Twelfth Night” alluded to the Great Bed of Ware, in which 12 guests could be accommodated at once at the Saracen’s Head

Inn in Hertfordshire. The bed is nearly 12ft square with a canopy 7ft high; it was probably made in the 15th century and can still be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. But the record size for a bed is said to be held by Belgium where Duke Philip the Good, of Burgundy, used a bed 19ft long and 13ft wide on the occasion of his nuptials with the Princess Isabel of Portugal in 1429. And if larger beds make for greater comfort, and an even greater reluctance to get up, then there are many precedents for working in bed. Milton wrote ‘Taradise Lost” there, not necessarily as he contemplated the prospect of arising; Swift, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mark Twain all preferred to write in bed; Rossini and Puccini composed in bed. Alexander the Great, and many a Roman Emperor, conducted the business of empire from their beds—although Napoleon, on campaign in Russia, once wrote angrily to rebuke his Empress in Paris when he heard she was holding court with the Ministers of State from her bed. The Emperor informed his young consort that it was not proper for a woman to hold Cabinet meetings in her bedroom until she was “over the age of 30.” G. K. Chesterton advocated painting on the ceiling while in bed. Chesterton was a connoisseur of lying in bed, but apart from ceiling painting he was opposed to any other activity while in repose, for he believed no healthy man should lie abed unless he was utterly without an excuse for doing so—the indulgence of bed should have no justification. In the amplitude of the new standard, metric bed the Chesterton philosophy could have many devotees.