Japanese Company Plans to Use Submarines to Stop Typhoons

A Japanese company is considering using submarines to diminish the power of typhoons that hit that nation:

The idea is to use a fleet of around 20 submarines in front of the gathering storm, each fitted with eight pumps capable of shooting 480 tonnes of cold water a minute. The submarines would dive to a depth of 30 meters and pump water from that depth onto the surface of the sea to lower the surface temperature.

Company executive Koichi Kitamura, who came up with the idea, said that in an hour a fleet of 20 submarines could lower the temperature of 57,000 square meters of surface water enough to diminish the strength of the typhoon, which needs an ocean temperature of 25 to 27 degrees Celsius to form and keep spinning. He said the scheme should be able to stop a typhoon in its tracks.


Link via Popular Science | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user DVIDSHUB used under Creative Commons license

"Environmental disruption brought to you by the people that kill whales. ...sigh"

Really? You're gonna lump in the whole nation?

It would be like for the US...

Peace brought to you by the people who nuked the shit out of another country
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This idea should work, it's called a heat sink, and it's discussed in the book Superfreakonomics . The proposal here in the US is for huge rings (of recycled material, maybe old car tires) surrounding a center tube that reaches down into the ocean. As the waves wash over this giant jellyfish-like structure, the warm water at the surface gets cooled by the colder water below, and the big Atlantic hurricanes lose power. No one has built one here yet, but if the Japanese put their idea out there and it works, I'm sure we'll be trying it too.
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It might work but it might also disrupt the ocean currents (google it) and have far reaching and more destructive consequences. No one's ever done it, so who knows?
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I don't think that 20 subs that pump water to the surface can have much impact on a typhoon (hurricane)...let alone "stop it in it's tracks". ---He said the scheme should be able to stop a typhoon in its tracks.---- "He", (Koichi Kitamura) is out of his mind.

Jill
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