hurricanes

[Nick Thompson]

All

I continue to be puzzled by the following paradox

Hurricanes are made of thunderstorms
Thunderstorms require sheer
The parts of hurricanes most prone to tornados are subject to sheer
Hurricanes are destroyed by sheer.

It seems that perhaps the way out of that paradox is to say that a
hurricane is some sort of coherent system for provideing sheer to
thunderstorms which ITSELF is sensative to sheer.  So a hurricane is itself
a sort of sheer providing system.  Then I began to wonder if perhaps the
sheer might be negative sheer.  Think of spiral columns of thunderstorms
moving rapidly toward the center of the hurricane in a situation in which
the air OVER the thunderstorms is not moving so fast or even spiraling in
the opposte direction.  Then it would be the movement of the thunderstorms
themselves, dictated by the structure of the hurricane itself, that
produces the sheer.  So, to reiterate, the idea is:  in normal strong
thunderstorms, the sheer is provided by jetstreams over the thundrstorm,
high level currents that more more rapidly than the storm it self (in some
direction or other ) .  In a hurricane, the sheer is provided by
rapidlymoving thundrstorms moving under a realtively static (or contrarily
rotating) upper level atmosphere?

Ring any bells with anybody?

I agree with Eric that we need a book!

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nickthompson at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
 nthompson at clarku.edu

> [Original Message]
> From: <Friam-request at redfish.com>
> To: <Friam at redfish.com>
> Date: 9/29/2005 12:00:45 PM
> Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 27, Issue 31
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Hurricanes (Nicholas Thompson)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 20:26:57 -0600
> From: "Nicholas Thompson" <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [FRIAM] Hurricanes
> To: Friam at redfish.com
> Message-ID: <410-22005942922657409 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> thank you, Eric, Robert, and Mike for these wonderful posts.  I want to
> consider each in detail, but in the meantime, a few random thoughts.  
>
> (1) I understand the movement of heat from low latituds to high lattitudes
> as a "function" of hurricanes but am less certain about the vertical
> assymetry in temperature.  A stable atmosphere is three to five degrees F
> -- average --- cooler for every thousand feet of altitude up to the
> tropopause ... somewhere around 35kfeet or so.  .  So, for instance, in an
> atmosphere that is, say  80 degrees at the surface is symmetrical if the
> temperature is, say,  zero F at 20 kfeet.  (Dont hold me to the exact
> numbers.)  So if temperature cannot be the name of the property of an
> atmosphere that is UNstable.  Are we talking about relative temperature,
> the lifted index..... what IS that property.   Is latent heat the sort of
> thing there can be an assymetry in?  
>
> (2)  Having read hundreds of hurricane discussions in the last year
> assiduously -- some would say obsessively --, I dont get the impression
> that hurricanes are "trying" to go north.  They just go wherever the wind
> blows them.  The currents that move them along are miniscule compared to
> the currents within the storm, which is why I asked if a hurricane is more
> like a top, a whirlpool, or a dervish.  Hurricanes start where it is warm
> and are dirrected by the currents that move along the bottom of a
> subtropical high.  When they hit the west end of the high they turn

north.
> The reason they appear to be a north-going thing is that they start in the
> south and if they get north they die.  but they can as easiy be carried
> south if they get into a south moving current. over water that is warm
> enough to sustain them.  Every rare once in a while,  when the bermuda
high
> pressed low enough a hurrican (or tropical storm) will come up the coast
of

> the US, turn eastward over the atlantic, travel back toward africa, and
> then head south around the EASTERN end of the Bermuda High.   The Bermuda
> High is itself a mixer but so far as the high is concerned, if a hurrican
> wants to walk around the top of it to africa, it is happy to comply.  
>
> (3) Finally, I wonder if anybody could help with the intuition block that
> makes it difficult for me to think of a whirling column of air as an
> obstacle.  I can see how it might suck me in but I cannot see how it might
> bounce me off.  
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> nickthompson at earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
>  nthompson at clarku.edu
>
>
> > [Original Message]
> > From: <Friam-request at redfish.com>
> > To: <Friam at redfish.com>
> > Date: 9/28/2005 6:36:18 PM
> > Subject: Friam Digest, Vol 27, Issue 30
> >
> > Send Friam mailing list submissions to
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> > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
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> >
> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >    1. Fwd: YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS WON THE LOTTERY. (Owen Densmore)
> >    2. Hurricanes and engines (Eric Smith)
> >    3. Re: Fwd: YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS WON THE LOTTERY. (Russell Standish)
> >    4. Hurricanes, People and Turbulence (Mike Oliker)
> >    5. Re: What are Hurricanes? (Robert Cordingley)
> >
> >
> > -
> > Hi Nick and all,
> >
> > Figured all lurk and no pay makes Eric a parasite.  
> >
> > I think Steve is very right about the engine interpretation, and would
> > offer a few details to it.  I haven't done the math for this, but
> > suspect I can correctly guess qualitative features.
> >
> > A secondary point of quantification: SFI had a visitor from NOAA about
> > a year ago (I forget her name; she was interested in medium-range
> > weather forecasting and how well it stood up under onset of chaotic
> > dynamics) who told me that the existence of the cyclonic storm seasons
> > raises the polar temeratures by about 3 degrees in early winter
> > relative to what it would be without them.  So Steve is right about
> > transport of heat from bottom to top of the atmosphere, but one should
> > also appreciate the importance of equator-to-pole transport.  I
> > suspect this is part of the reason for the tropic-to-temperate paths
> > taken by storms in the Atlantic (haven't ever looked at pacific
> > storms to see if they do the same thing).
> >
> > Second point to appreciate is the extreme importance of water in
> > distinguishing hurricanes, and this adds to Steve's point, and changes
> > it perhaps a bit.  It is not just transport of heat from lower to
> > upper atmosphere.  The thing hurricanes do systematically is draw in
> > cool, relatively dry air from mid to upper atmosphere hundreds of
> > miles away, dragging it over the ocean where it can absorb warm water
> > which is then convected upward.  The water carries ocean heat into the
> > atmosphere through the specific heat of vaporization, I suspect in far
> > larger degree than through any temperature change.  As the convected
> > water vapor reaches the upper atmosphere it condenses, releasing the
> > latent heat to the air where it can be radiated off to space, and
> > releasing the now-cooled water to fall as rain, some of which
> > re-evaporates on the way down but much of which falls back into the
> > ocean whence it came, replacing the warm water with cold.  The air
> > transported up in the convective column flows out in dehydrated form
> > at high atmospheric levels, to replace the air drawn in at the base of
> > the system to sweep over the ocean.
> >
> > My guess is that if one compared hurricane convection to disordered
> > Benard convection or thunderstorm systems covering the same area, one
> > would find that the hurricane cycles a vastly greater volume of
> > atmosphere laterally across the ocean surface, and with that cycles a
> > vastly greater volume of ocean water through the
> > evaporation/condensation cycle, and that through that mechanism it
> > transports more heat both vertically, and up-lattitude as a
> > second-order effect, than disordered storms could.  The extent to
> > which it seems relevant to recognize that as a function is the extent
> > to which the function, particularly, is relief of a thermal stress.
> > The large-scale relief of stress seems to be the "force" (to use a
> > word badly) that favors the emergence and stabilization of
> > nonequilibrium channels through which the stress is relieved.
> >
> > Regarding "individuality" at the level of named storms: It is
> > interesting that, if we regard the reliability of hurricane form as
> > empirical evidence, the most efficient such engine the atmosphere
> > finds is one in which the tens of thousands of square miles of shear
> > flow are subordinated to the angularly ordered convective system, most
> > notable near the eyewall.  In that sense each storm creates conditions
> > that essentially preclude the concurrent formation of other eyewall
> > systems in proximity competing for (or driven into existence by) the
> > same sources of energy.  The exception, of course, being the eyewall
> > replacement, in which the instability of extreme angular momenta
> > around a very small eye apparently weaken its ability to constrain all
> > the surrounding lateral convection, and the conditions that led to the
> > original eyewall do lead to the formation of a new secondary eyewall
> > concentric with the destabilizing one that is on the way out.
> >
> > I would readily identify this regularity of form with the regularity
> > of form of the chemistry in lightning strikes, and probably with the
> > regularity of form of certain biochemical pathways.  The individual
> > who emerges in biology, however, probably does so in response to
> > rather different sequences of pressures, even though once emerged, he
> > shares certain "Darwinian" aspects with the individual hurricane.  
> >
> > I have thought for years it would be wonderful to see a book in which
> > a comprehensive suite of mathematical models of hurricanes was
> > reviewed, from abstract to quantitatively accurate.  If anybody knows
> > of a compact and well-written book, I would enjoy reading it.
> >
> > Eric
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 18:08:32 -0600
> > From: "Mike Oliker" <mike.oliker at comcast.net>
> > Subject: [FRIAM] Hurricanes, People and Turbulence
> > To: <Friam at redfish.com>
> > Message-ID: <012701c5c489$f10cd1c0$0300a8c0 at INSPIRON2650>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> > Robert's response reminds me of the questions I started the semester

with
> > when I taught Chaos, Fractals, and Complexity to Honors Undergrads at
UNM:
> > (1) What is a Forest that isn't trees?
> > (2) What is a Person that isn't cells?
> >  
> > Also, about the Hurricanes thread:
> > Is turbulence alive?  Looking at a Von Karmen Vortex street
> >
>
(http://www.efunda.com/designstandards/sensors/flowmeters/images/vortex_Karm
> > enStreet2.gif) one sees
> > a sequence of vortices shed as air goes past an obstruction.  I would
> argue
> > that each vortex as is shed it creates the perturbation which assures
that

> > the next vortex will match it in mirror image.  Thus, it is reproducing.
> > There is an initial period as the air is starting up, where a great
> > diversity of turbules (bits of spinning air) arises but these quickly
> evolve
> > into a single species (until the wind changes).  These vortices are
> throwing
> > up spontaneous obsticles to the air flow which allows them to gather
> energy
> > from the flowing wind -- in Stu Kauffman terms they are harnessing a
> > thermodynamic work cycle, harvesting energy from their environment.  
> >  
> > Hurricanes are quite similar.  They gather vastly more energy by
> > facilitating the flow of heat from the warm ocean to the cool high
> altitude
> > air.  They exist in a more diverse environment with many other air flow
> > species.  Where turbulence resolves it's symmetry breaking early and

only
> > once, hurricanes must do so over and over.  They are less effective
(thank

> > God) at reproduction.
> >  
> > By the way, if galaxies are like hurricanes and turbulence is alive ...
> >  
> > -Mike Oliker
> >
> >
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 09:26:49 -0600
> > From: Robert Holmes <rholmes62 at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What are Hurricanes?
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> >         <Friam at redfish.com>
> > Message-ID: <8577701505092708263b0f4bd5 at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> >
> > On 9/27/05, Jochen Fromm <fromm at vs.uni-kassel.de> wrote:
> > >
> > > ... Nevertheless, I
> > > think it is interesting that hurricanes get names, although they are
> > > non-permanent, volatile and temporary dynamic phenomena. ....
> >
> > Just like humans :)
> >
> >
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> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 5
> > Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 19:34:45 -0500
> > From: Robert Cordingley <robert at cirrillian.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What are Hurricanes?
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> > <Friam at redfish.com>
> > Message-ID: <433B36A5.5070501 at cirrillian.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> > There was an interesting article in the NY Science Times:
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/science/earth/27loop.html
> >
> > which you might be able to see.  The article discusses the dimension of
> > subsea energy and the depth of warm water needed.  So it also depends

on

> > subsea counterpart(s) - the loop - and other 'things' which should be
> > considered as the storm makes it's way across our oceans?
> >
> > Robert Cordingley
> >
> >
> > Douglas Roberts wrote:
> >
> > > Not to mention; full of hot air.
> > >
> > > On 9/27/05, Robert Holmes <rholmes62 at gmail.com
> > > <mailto:rholmes62 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> > >
> > >     On 9/27/05, Jochen Fromm <fromm at vs.uni-kassel.de
> > >     <mailto:fromm at vs.uni-kassel.de>> wrote:
> > >     >
> > >     > ... Nevertheless, I
> > >     > think it is interesting that hurricanes get names, although
> > >     > they are non-permanent, volatile and temporary dynamic

phenomena.

> > >     > ....
> > >
> > >     Just like humans :)
> > >
> > >     <snipped>
> > >
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