IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Rainmaking 102 - Dick LaRosa

One of the solar absorber floats is 4.5 inch wide by 15 inches long. 0.75 inch x 1.125 inch strips are nailed across both ends. This makes the active tar-paper-covered area only 12.75 inches long, but the cross strips are essential. Without them, the absorber plate would sink to the bottom when weighted sufficiently to submerge it. The cross strips are on top and stick out of the water when the absorber plate is about 0.12 inch below the surface. The ballast weights are such that at this depth the weight of the absorber float is equal to the weight of the water displaced. If the float tries to sink deeper, the cross strips displace more water and the increased buoyancy brings the float back to the correct level.

Rainmaking 101 - Dick LaRosa

We have a serious drought in the U.S., but I don't have a good understanding of the North American monsoon wind patterns. There is also serious drought on the the entire Indian Subcontinent and the Indian summer monsoon is simpler to describe. When Spring arrives, the land heats up, heating the air above it. This air rises and is replaced by air that comes in from the Arabian Sea which lies to the west of the Indian peninsula. This air contains moisture that evaporates from the water. The Western Ghats mountain range runs along the western edge of the Indian peninsula and the incoming air must rise up to cross the mountains. This air encounters lower pressure at the higher altitude, so it expands, cools adiabatically, and if it cools down to the dew point, moisture condenses out on cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). CCN are aerosol particles which can be dust particles, sea salt crystals, organic matter, soot, etc. If the water droplets are large enough, they may coalesce and form droplets that are heavy enough to precipitate. My understanding of cloud physics is deficient, so I will oversimplify the reason why the Indian summer monsoon has not produced sufficient rain: too little moisture distributed on too many CCN. The drought is not only on the coast. The winds flow over the entire subcontinent, reaching the Himalayas.

Gas-To-Liquid-----Carl Schwab

Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) is a refinery process to convert natural gas into longer-chain hydrocarbons such as gasoline or diesel fuel. Gas-To-Liquid or GTL is the most recent version of the Fischer-Tropsch process first advanced about 1923. Why the interest now? Simply put it is because of the vast amount of methane gas, CH4 that is available.

 A simple look-----CH4, methane is the shortest of the paraffin series hydrocarbon chains that satisfy the formula --------CnH(2n+2). You can satisfy this by substituting n=1 and voila CH4. Now for car gasoline the values of n range from 4< n <9. For diesel the range is 9< n <15. BTW fuels manufactured in this manner are free of extraneous materials i.e. more pure.

Quiet Time in the Loop - Dick LaRosa

From 2/26/2012 to 3/10/2012 no new eddies seemed to be arriving from the North Brazil Current. The Loop Current (LC) intrusion into the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) extended about 550 km from the coast of Cuba and the average width of the U-shaped intrusion was about 270 km. The sea surface height (SSH) contours inside the Loop path had a single peak which was 70 cm high at the start of the period and decayed to 65 cm on 3/9/2012. I could see water draining out of the peak and flowing toward Cuba. At the coast, it split, and some went downstream toward Key West while the remainder flowed along the coast toward the western tip of Cuba where it was incorporated into the LC.

Loop Current Interaction with Eddies - Dick LaRosa

My fascination with the Loop Current (LC) in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) began when I believed it was possible to reduce hurricane intensity by reducing the area of the pool of warm water inside the loop. This would reduce the latent heat available to energize a hurricane. I thought that excess hydraulic drive power forced the LC path to be long in order to dissipate the extra drive power in turbulent friction. Using water-powered turbines to absorb the extra power would shorten the loop and reduce the area of warm water. Several years of work have convinced me that my original hypothesis was wrong, but I think that I now have a correct explanation for the bewildering behavior of the LC.

Interpreting Those Contours - Dick LaRosa

Each day, the University of Colorado gives us a new map of sea surface height (SSH) contours in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). The map covers the entire GoM, some of the Florida Straits, and frustratingly little of the Yucatan Channel (YC). The YC is a busy place, where the Loop Current (LC) and eddies formed in the North Brazil Current enter the GoM.  The eddies are both clockwise (CW) and counter clockwise (CCW). The CCW eddies seem to pass freely into the GoM, but the CW eddies seem to get trapped by the LC. This is because the CW eddies flow around hills of warm water, and the LC rarely flows up over these hills. A new eddy might push the loop path further into the GoM, or it might collide with another CW eddy that is already trapped in the loop. In the latter case, the peripheral flows of the two eddies have opposing velocities at the initial contact point, and the water piles up. The kinetic energy is changed to potential energy (height). Some angular momentum of the respective eddies is lost. I call this an annihilation event.

Old Dog Learns New Tricks - Dick LaRosa

Better late than never, I learned to enlarge plots of sea surface height (SSH) in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) on the monitor screen by hitting Ctrl and + multiple times. Now I can actually see two clockwise eddies trapped in the Loop Current (LC) running into each other and piling up water. This destroys some of their individual vorticities, creates SSH as high as 150 cm where their respective peripheral velocities collide. This creates a steep ramp of SSH whose downhill direction is pointed in the downstream direction toward Florida. The ramp is always located on the north coast of Cuba near Los Orroyos at the west end close to where the two capes are  joined to the wider part of the island.

I also learned to hit Prt Scr to copy the expanded screen into the Clipboard so that I can paste it into Word. I don't do this too often because it generates too many printouts when I watch the annihilation events at one-day intervals. Sometimes the SSH labels obscure the SSH contours and I have to go back-and-forth between annotated and un-annotated SSH contours, as well as view successive days to follow the progress of a particular feature. The selection page of the website has a strange appearance when it is expanded, but I have become quite familiar with it and can navigate easily.

CLATHRATE/HYDRATE/CH4/CO2/FRACKING??--Carl Schwab

Recent interest in fracking (fracturing) shale layers to release methane (CH4) and oil is stirring quite a controversy. I want to make some comments that may shed some light and reduce the smoke a little<G>. There are a number of anecdotal stories about burning ice, water wells that gush bubbling water and well water that fizzes.

Methane gas, CH4, (or carbon dioxide, CO2) rather easily bound to clusters of water molecules in a few different ways. In the middle US states, frequently by sufficient relatively low pressure, gaseous CH4 or CO2 are readily absorbed in to cool water such as one could pump from say a 120 foot deep well for drinking water. When this water is brought to the surface the CH4 or CO2 will bubble off and go into the atmosphere and is perfectly drinkable. As a fact well pumps have been designed to separate the CH4 or CO2 at the well bottom and let the CH4 rise (lighter than air) and vent harmlessly. They are careful NOT to make the well top airtight. The CO2 being heavier than air will sink to the bottom of the well shaft. This is NOT from hydration.

Gulf of Mexico Drilling and Eddies - Dick LaRosa

Drilling of gas and oil wells is done from the surface, using drill ships that sometimes look like conventional ships, and sometimes look like oil production platforms. The bottom may be 10,000 feet below the surface. The drill consists of a number of rods connected together, suspended and rotated from the top of a tower. The tower is built on the drill ship's deck, centered over a moon pool. The moon pool is a watertight passage through the ship's hull that allows the drill string to be lowered into the water from the top of the tower. Using GPS as a reference, the drill ship is held in position over the well by means of thrusters. This is called dynamic positioning. The drill bit is rotated from the top of the tower through the string of rods. As the bit drills into the bottom, more rod sections are hoisted into place and connected into the drill string.

The Rain - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C., ambertec@ieee.org

We are so jaded that we tend to accept phrases like "the forces of nature" without even blinking an eye, but maybe it would be a good thing to blink now and then, at least a little.

Let's look at a very common and simple phenomenon, a rainfall of one inch over an open land area of one square mile.

We define a square of one mile on a side:                      1 mile on each side.

The one-mile square has sides measured in feet:          5,280 feet on each side.

The area of the square in square feet:                            27,878,400 square feet of area

Water depth of one inch expressed in feet:                     0.083333333 foot of depth

Water volume in cubic feet:                                           2,323,200 cubic feet of volume

Water density in pounds per cubic foot:                          64 pounds per cubic foot

Water weight in lbs.                                                       148,684,800 pounds

Water weight in mega-lbs.                                              148.6848 million pounds

A simple one inch rainfall over just one square mile weighs more than 148 million pounds and just think about how all of that weight was up in the sky just a little while before in the form of some nice fluffy white clouds that maybe you thought looked a little like a bunny.

Weather control, anyone?