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Now, More Pleasing Odor!
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Would this potentially cool the surface waters of the gulf, reducing the likelihood of hurricanes? |
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Why yes it should, as well as cool the air slightly. |
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How would it cool both the water and air? Any disparity in temperature between the water and air should diminish from the circulation. One would get warmer and the other cooler. The air is normally warmer, I'm guessing. |
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The fountain could get leveled by a silt land slide from the Mississippi delta. I don't know. |
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Churning cold water from the lower regions of the gulf water column would have the effect of reducing surface temperatures. Water surface temps drive the formation and perpetuation of tropical storms, which turn into hurricanes which strengthen over warm water areas. |
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//Any disparity in temperature between the water and air should diminish from the circulation.// |
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No, you're forgetting about evaporation. Evaporation is a cooling process, where heat energy is used to change the phase of water from liquid to gas. The (dry bulb) air temperature can drop as low as the "wet bulb" temperature, which approaches the dry bulb temperature as the air becomes more humid. Admittedly, the water temperature will rise in such a fountain if it's lower than the wet bulb temperature, and summer wet bulb temps are around 78F. But I like UB's idea of pulling water from down deep, which should be well colder than surface temperatures. |
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I understand the evaporation thing but wasn't taking into consideration the third tempurature value, that of the deep water. |
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Churning the tempuratures could mess things up but I guess the point is that it already is messed up. |
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Actually, the silt slide (a la jscottpete) might be a less ostentatious but equally effective route to dispersing the relatively shallow hypoxic pool that is the GoM's "dead zone". Pump colder water from deep in the Gulf beyond the shelf, but rather than spray it above sea level as is suggested above allow it instead to cut its own channel off of the shelf back to cooler water. |
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Two benefits should accrue: the first is a current arising to carry ambient water at the discharge point away to deeper water, the second is a channel cut over time that will serve to divert natural ground water that seeps out of the shelf in several sites. This groundwater is well filtered, deoxygenated and denatured by salt and petroleum deposits underground and cannot but add to the transient hypoxia stemming from stream effluents. |
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This approach would be more targeted to local pockets of hypoxic ocean and would require less fuel to pump water without propelling it into the air. |
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Perhaps the dead zone has been there for a while but groundwater pumping on the mainland has reduced the capability of the natural aquifers to flush the eutrophied water away? |
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Slowing down hurricanes is a nice idea, but how will a fountain like this otherwise affect the SE U.S.? Particularly the areas of Alabama, Georgia and Florida that are drought stricken now as a result of not enough tropical activity? That's not necessarily a great thing. |
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But, a bun for a giant corn fountain. |
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