Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science

Energy of a Hurricane compared to a 1 megaton bomb

Hurricane numbers From: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html

The Total energy (per day) in an "average" hurricane released by rain and cloud formation is ~5.2*10^19 Joules per day, or a power of 600 trillion Watts... Lets call this per-day precipitation energy Eprecipitation

The energy that goes, per day, into sustaining a mature hurricane's winds is estimated in the above link as being 1.3*10^17 Joules per day or 1.5 trillion watts. Lets call this per-day wind energy Ewind

I do not vouch for the above numbers, but I am willing to assume that the NOAA can do their math in these matters

The energy released in a 1 MEGATON TNT explosion is ~4.18*10^15 joules.

Eprecipitation is more than 10,000 Megatons of TNT....

Ewind is ~30 Megatons of TNT (This seems low to me, take this with a grain of salt)

so the total energy of a hurricane dwarfs our nuclear and thermonuclear bombs... of course the time period over which this energy is released matters...

Take the above numbers with a grain of salt... this is just off the cuff playing with numbers...

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