There is an ambitious plan to stop hurricanes in their tracks using bubbles.
You think you must be crazy?
Yep. Bubbles and tests are already underway.
Here's why we might need it.
Hurricanes are getting stronger.
Scientists say that rising sea temperatures are fueling hurricanes and making them increasingly fierce.
This was Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In just one day, it was responsible for 40% of all hurricane related deaths in a 50 year period.
And since then, nine major hurricanes have made landfall in the United States alone.
Modelling also suggests that there may be a 20% increase in major hurricanes globally by the end of the century.
Given the scale of the problem.
You'd think it might be impossible to solve it.
But there's a scientist in Norway who's helped develop a technology using bubbles that might just be the key.
It seems like an out there idea, but when it comes to the world of geoengineering, nothing has been off the cards.
Scientists have been trying to engineer their way out of a hurricane since at least the 1960s.
Project Storm Fury, a joint effort of NOAA, The Navy and the Air Force.
In Project Storm Fury, scientists thought that they could artificially create a new eye wall which could clash with the original one and weaken the storm.
That, unfortunately, failed.
More recently, scientists suggested spraying fine seawater droplets into the sky to reflect away the sun's rays and thus cool the sea.
This is still being explored, but it's at very early stages.
Other gems proposed include towing icebergs to cool down warmer seas, purposely making oil slicks on the sea surface to prevent evaporation
and anti hurricane jet engines on barges that would literally suck the heat from the ocean.
Obviously.
Some have even suggested that shockwaves from a nuke could disrupt the hurricane and weaken its process.
Thankfully, that one's not being seriously considered.
But let's get back to the bubble idea.
And yep, I know what you're thinking.
How on earth could bubbles possibly stop 100 mile an hour hurricane?
But the interesting thing about this plan is it's already been through various trials and simulations,
And they're actually plans to start trialling this in the real world.
So I tracked down scientist Grim Eidnes, who first developed the idea at SINTEF, a Norwegian research agency,
having been inspired by a traditional Norwegian technique of using bubbles to prevent fjords from freezing over.
A bubble curtain is a perforated tube that is submerged into the sea, into the ocean.
The bubble curtain in Mo i Rana, for instance, is keeping the area around the bubble curtains free of ice.
The way we do this in Norway is to lift up the lower layer of warmer water up to the surface.
Where it mix with the cold water and thus changes the temperature of the surface water.
Grim wants to flip this idea around and take it to the tropics,
Using it against hurricanes where water from the depths is colder and therefore can be used to cool the surface temperature.
To understand their plan, we're first going to need a crash course as to how hurricanes actually form,
because sea surface temperature plays a massive role.
So a hurricane is born as a pretty innocuous tropical storm.
But when that storm passes over warmer seas,
Typically that means temperatures above 26.5.
Then this warmth fuels and feeds the storm, intensifying it into a full blown hurricane.
It does this because large volumes of evaporated water from the sea surface rise to form huge storm clouds,
which are often rotated by very strong winds.
If those wind speeds exceed 74 miles per hour,
boom, you've got yourself a hurricane.
26.5 you cut off the energy supply.
If it's 30.5 or 32 degrees Celsius, then a lot of energy could be transported up to the hurricane.
So 26.5 degrees, that's the sweet spot.
Below this temperature, there's no net feeding of the hurricane stopping it from becoming more ferocious.
That's why sea surface temperature is at the heart of the bubble plan.
By pumping up colder water from the depths to the top and therefore lowering the temperature.
But if pumping up water is all that's needed, why can't they just use pipes?
That has been suggested by several people.
Cold water is heavier than warm water if it be too heavy it sinks down again.
So bubble curtains act like a blender, creating this mixed layer and keeping the water cool.
With the ocean currents also helping to spread this effect to larger areas.
Sounds handy, especially since hurricanes can span hundreds of miles,
Depriving hurricanes of its food source using this cold water blanket is an ingenious plan.
But is there any proof it actually works?
You have performed a proof of concept with real weather and real temperatures.
This computer model shows how cooler water caused by the bubble curtain spreads using natural currents.
This simulation showed that in 40 hours, the cooler water spread over 60 kilometers.
So they've shown in theory that this bubble curtain can affect the temperature of a large area of the ocean surface.
The next stage is to run a larger simulation on historical hurricanes.
What about trying out in the real world?
All the tests you have in Norway are very shallow water models.
And when we talk to the Gulf of Mexico, we talk about 50 meters, maybe 100 and even 150 meters depth.
That's why we went to Vanvikan to try to have at least 50 meters of test.
Once these trials are complete the endgame for Grim's plan is to have a series of bubble curtains towed along by tugboats.
But for all that to work in real world context, there's still one massive hurdle they'd need to overcome.
They need to rapidly deploy the boats to the right place at the right time
and in order to do that, they need to know exactly where and when the hurricane is going to form.
So I took a trip to the National Center for Atmospheric Science to meet meteorologist and climate risk expert Dr. Liz Stephens,
to find out just how difficult it is to prevent a hurricane.
We're very good at being able to forecast the track of hurricanes further in advance,
but sometimes we miss the exact intensity that those storms will be.
Modern day computer models struggle to capture this intensity.
We just don't have enough information on the small physical events happening within the center of the hurricane.
In the US pilots actually fly into the center of the storm to gather this crucial data directly.
We've seen tropical cyclones in recent years that have rapidly intensified
even less than 12 hours before they've made landfall
and this hasn't been something that's been well forecasted.
Even with all the cutting edge satellites and weather models
it's still very tough to predict hurricanes in advance.
So for some people, defense rather than attack is still our best bet when it comes to dealing with hurricanes.
The best way to reduce the impacts of tropical cyclones and hurricanes is to ensure
that we are building houses and infrastructure to withstand them
and that means building them with stronger roofs so that we're really reducing the impacts.
Actual physical barriers like flood walls can be a game changer when it comes to things like storm surges,
where the strong winds cause the sea to rise, which is often the leading cause of death from hurricanes.
The Thames barrier, for example, shields London from storm surges and flooding.
But in areas of the world aren't able to afford them,
natural barriers like mangroves and wetlands can be really effective in protecting coastlines.
There's another big concern about geoengineering, though.
Geoengineering might do well at reducing temperatures and reducing the risk of heat waves
for example,
But in other parts of the world, it could end up perhaps restricting rainfall,
which could lead to more droughts.
This seems to be the general consensus among many scientists skeptical of geoengineering.
Whether it's droughts or affecting marine ecosystems,
how do we avoid an even bigger problem from the knock on effects of meddling with nature?
It's a crucial area that the bubble plan doesn't seem to be addressing just yet.
There are things with respect to climate, with respect to ecology that we want others to look into,
and we have started this to find out the best companies to do this work for us.
If further trials and simulations are successful,
the final gear in Grim's plan is a full scale demonstration in the Gulf of Mexico, a hotspot for hurricanes.
If you have some good warnings that it will come to this location,
the track will be there, get some vessels going there immediately and I can do it now.
So as long as the forecasts of the trajectory of the hurricanes is good enough, we can we can act on them also.
Clearly, the jury is definitely still out,
but unlike most geoengineering ideas, this one's actually going ahead.
So it'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming years.
If the bubble curtain shows to have a real impact on the hurricanes,
I think I would be glad
I would certainly smile and I would feel relief.
Until then, it doesn't seem like a bad idea to take Liz's advice,
that defense can really be the best form of attack when dealing with hurricanes.
By beefing up natural barriers,
bolstering storm defenses and improving early warning systems,
and critically preventing further sea temperature rise by addressing climate change.