Is there a meteorologist in the house? Will this work?

[NNN0LHI]

http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5448005&startrow=1&date=2005-03-02&do_alert=0

REFLECTED LIGHT TO SAVE EARTH FROM NATURAL DISASTERS


MOSCOW, March 2 (RIA Novosti) - This spring two Russian satellites will be orbited with the task of blocking natural disasters and lighting certain spots on the Earth's surface. They will use the simple method of reflected light from thin-filmed space reflectors, writes Moskovsky Komsomolets.

According to Aerospace Systems, thin-filmed reflectors are a kind of a sail made of modern materials that feel like a mixture of foil and cellophane. The most difficult task is to open the 25m sail in space.

It is believed that the miracle sail will be able to correct weather, sending reflected light and warming the clouds to ensure good weather for a football match, for example.

The same goes for tornadoes, which are provoked by a concentration of low pressure in some areas, where air is sucked in giving birth to a violently rotating column of air. As soon as such dangerous concentrations are registered, the satellites would send a ray of reflected light there, heating the air and raising the pressure, which will prevent the emergence of a tornado.

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[StopTheMorans]

1. you're better off guessing yourself, metereologists are never right

[Drifter]

2. Sure hope they can ...

aim that thing at my driveway for a few minutes.

Friggin Snow.

Cheers
Drifter

[HereSince1628]

3. Not a meteorologist, but how little of this would contribute to warming

of the atmosphere?

The inputs of each one of these things might be small but things have a tendency to add up.

And if you accept the "butterfly flaps wing, tornado strikes Witchita" sort of connections, well, you know.

[soothsayer]

4. Everybody's doing weather modification! YOu should have seen

the chemtrails we had the morning our snow storm was due. They seem to do their heaviest spraying ahead of a front.

Weather wars! The new frontier.

[dbt]

10. Excellent catch, soothsayer!

And I have noticed them spraying behind fronts as well.

[vonSchloegel]

5. My guess, it's impossible

Enormous sails are required, to collect enough energy to alter the weather. They then would be subject to pressure from the solar wind, pushing the satellite backwards.

To illustrate the logistical difficulty: imagine putting a wind surfing rig on a skateboard, and using it to blow out the candles on a birthday cake.

In order to maintain orbit, the satellite would have to expend quite a bit of energy, probably as much as it would be reflecting. Hence it would make more sense just to station a giant blowtorch out in space.

[immoderate]

9. That's what I thought.

Solar wind will blow it into space. Kind of like holding up a shield to deflect the force of a fire hose.

--IMM

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

6. Of course it's real!

Didn't you watch that James Bond flick? Would they make something like that up for mere entertainment?

Jeez!

:evilgrin:

[northzax]

7. Is this the Russian Onion?

This is inconceivable. I don't have the figures in front of me, but it basically doesn't make any sense, according to the laws of physics. First off, there would have to be a huge amount of energy to disrupt a weather pattern, there is no evidence that the weather has been affected by thermonuclear bombs going off in the atmosphere, let alone something this small.

second, the energy loss coming through the atmosphere would greatly reduce the amount of energy that made it to the surface, increasing the force multiplier needed.

and third, well you get the drift. a 25m sail might have the ability, under the best of circumstances, to raise the temperature of about a square meter of ground 1-2 degrees over the course of a day. that's not going to change much.

[Lisa]

8. since this thing is above the atmosphere ...

I think that some help from the physics contingent would be particularly helpful ... meteorology tends to focus on stuff going on within the troposphere (close to the surface), with some attention to stratospheric things like the jetstream. What happens to large structures in space isn't really in their bailiwick.

Looking at long-term climate change (rather than midlatitude fluid dynamics and storm formation, etc.) a climatologist or atmospheric physicist might be able to shed some light (hah!) on the problems. There was a special issue of Climate Change a few years back that looked at various geoengineering proposals (including tinkering with the carbon cycle, and increasing surface albedo, as well as ideas like this (and a related strategy, "seeding" the upper atmosphere with SO2 or particulates to reflect incoming sunlight).

The scientists didn't seem to think it would work (though the "seeding" idea was seen as slightly more feasible because it didn't involve spaceflight).

[madinmaryland]

11. Beam me up Scotty!

Sounds a little far fetched to me.