DisastersCold water-pumping submarines to reduce ferocity of typhoons

Ise Kogyo Co., a Japanese hydraulic engineering company based in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, has obtained patents in both India and Japan for its idea to use water-pumping submarines to downgrade the force of typhoons.

Ise Kogyo filed patent applications in January 2006 with the relevant agencies in Japan, the United States, and India. Japanese and Indian patents were issued this July, and the application in the United States is expected to be approved soon.

Manichi Daily News reports that based on observations that typhoon intensity tends to remain level when ocean surface temperatures are high, Ise Kogyo engineers concluded that the intensity of the storm could be reduced by deploying submarines to waters in the typhoon’s path and then reducing ocean surface temperatures by pumping up cold water from below.

The so-called “ocean surface temperature lowering device” would consist of eight 20-meter-long water pumps 70 centimeters in diameter attached to both sides of a submarine, and would pump colder water from a depth of thirty meters up to the surface of the ocean.

Ise Kogyo president Koichi Kitamura, who developed the idea, says a submarine fitted with the device has the capacity to pump approximately 480 metric tons of water per minute. Twenty submarines dispatched to waters in a typhoon’s path could, in an hour, lower ocean surface temperatures by three degrees Celsius in an area of 57,600 square meters, thereby weakening the strength of the typhoon.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, an ocean surface temperature of 25 to 26 degrees Celsius is crucial for a typhoon to develop initially. To maintain its force, the typhoon requires a water temperature of about 27 degrees. Experts say that the challenge lies not in lowering the water’s temperature and in so doing reduce the storm’s intensity — but rather in accurately predicting a typhoon’s course. Still, they say that, in theory, it is possible for such a device to make typhoons smaller.

Kitamura has received around thirty patents for various ideas and inventions, including the “internal surface band” used to patch up leaking water pipes from the inside. He heretofore has not demanded patent royalties, however, and says that the purpose of his latest patent application is also to receive the approval of his idea from public organizations.