TITLE:
Hurricane Initiation: An Hypothesis
AUTHORS:
Kern E. Kenyon
KEYWORDS:
Hurricane Initiation
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Science,
Vol.6 No.5,
March
5,
2014
ABSTRACT: A hurricane initiation mechanism, believed to
be new, is proposed for the eastern tropical North Atlantic Ocean. It starts
with an outbreak of warm dry air from the Sahara Desert moving out over a
fairly large region of ocean just west of the big bulge of Africa. Critical to
the hypothesis is the experimental fact that heat diffuses significantly slower
in air than water vapor does. In summer and early fall the desert air of the
outbreak is warmer than the ocean surface it first encounters. Thus this air
layer is cooled from below, which is initially stabilizing. However, water
vapor diffuses up into the dry air faster than the air’s heat diffuses down to
the sea surface, all over the generating region simultaneously. Consequently, a
horizontally large layer of air somewhat above the sea surface becomes buoyant
(less dense) and rises up as a unit, and the pressure of this layer decreases
by the perfect gas law. Then the water vapor in the ascending air condenses
around dust particles brought in from the desert, releasing heat and producing
an additional upward acceleration of the already ascending air. Atmospheric
pressure lowers further in accordance with Bernoulli’s law: where the
(vertical) speed is greatest, the pressure is least. Measurements are suggested
to validate the hypothesis if they do not already exist.