A way to stop tornadoes ?

[adam2]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26492720

Build giant walls, not to actually stop an already existing tornado, but to disrupt the air currents that cause tornado formation.
Some experts suggest that this would work in a similar way to the disruption offered by natural barriers such as hills and mountains.

Others are more doubtful

I suspect that it could work, and that the vast cost in money and embodied energy could be partly offset by incorporating wind turbines.

[Tarrel]

Technically feasible to do, given enough energy and resources. I don't know enough about the physics to know if it would work. I think the biggest barrier ('scuse the pun) to such a project getting off the ground would be capital availability. Who's going to fund it? Insurance companies?

I wonder if afforestation would have an impact on the air currents? I know trees don't grow to 300m, but would air passing over several hundred square miles of forest be sufficiently changed in temperature and/or moisture content to disrupt the conditions needed for tornadoes to form?

[biffvernon]

I think the forest might get in the way of the arable farming!

[PS_RalphW]

A 300M high wall would put a lot of land in permanent shadow.

[Tarrel]

A 300M high wall would put a lot of land in permanent shadow.

Plant trees on the shady side. They really only need light above. In theory it should lead to nice, straight-growing trees good for lumber production.

Area in shade would be around 5,000 hectares (if the wall is 100 miles long). At 2m spacings, that's 12.5 million trees! Mixed rotation coppice-with-standards should yield a variety of products, from basket-materials to firewood and lumber, and provide employment for an army of coppice-workers, craftspeople, charcoal-burners, sawyers, basket-makers, etc. All the while sequestering carbon for the next 500 years or so. Will probably outlast the wall!

[Little John]

There will be unforeseen consequences. The earth's living systems have had millions of years to both develop complex coping mechanisms to deal with climatic systems and have even evolved to the extent that they play a significant part in creating those very climatic systems.

We need to stop believing we can techo-fix our way out of the abyss and begin, instead, to step back from it.

[RenewableCandy]

Perhaps just planting the trees without building the wall would work almost as well. It'd certainly be cheaper...

[Tarrel]

Perhaps just planting the trees without building the wall would work almost as well. It'd certainly be cheaper...

Yes, that's what I wondered. See post above.

[emordnilap]

Perhaps just planting the trees without building the wall would work almost as well. It'd certainly be cheaper...

Agreed. And it could be done - quickly - by people who can't/won't build walls.

[kenneal - lagger]

Cover the south side in PV to help defray the cost. No! the whole idea is a bit on the silly side.

[adam2]

Yes put PV on one side, and build houses against the other side.
Allways a need for housing, and against the wall would be less obtrusive than elsewhere.
In areas unsuitable for housing, then put wind turbines atop the wall. The structure would have to be built stronger to resist the thrust of the wind, but I suspect that a strengthened wall with wind turbine would be cheaper than individual wind turbine towers, and again less obtrusive.

[kenneal - lagger]

A wall always caused very strong eddy currents on its leeward side which can be very destructive. Putting a line, or lines, of wind turbines in the top of the wall would lessen this eddy current to a great extent and also reduce the loading on the wall.

Even with all this technology added I still don't think it's more than an academic's pipe dream. And you're talking about an one hundred storey block of flats, 100 miles long here.

[emordnilap]

...and it's a denial of the causes of worse weather.

OK, deal with what's to come - but without fossil fuel cessation, it's an immoral use of money and resources.