Delicate Soap Bubbles Could Predict Intense Cyclones and Hurricanes

Could something as delicate as a soap bubble be used to predict the strength of swirling hurricanes and massive typhoons? Apparently it can. Scientists have employed soap bubbles to model atmospheric flow which, in turn, allowed them to obtain a relationship that accurately describes the evolution of their intensity.

Predicting the strength in tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes is a tricky business. The forecasts involve many factors related to the complexity of these giant vortices and their interaction with the environment. Yet it's crucial since the lives of hundreds of thousands of people may depend on these predictions.

Soap bubbles, though, may hold the key to these predictions. Researchers carried out simulations of flow on soap bubbles--the colorful spirals and vortices that you can see if the light hits the surface of a bubble correctly. More specifically, the scientists reproduced the curvature of the atmosphere and approximated as closely as possible a simple model of atmospheric flow. This allowed them to obtain vortices that resembled tropical cycles and whose rotation rate and intensity exhibited astonishing dynamics.

The researchers found that the vortices are initially weak, just after their birth. Then, their power increases significantly over time. Following this intensification phase, the vortex attains its maximum intensity before entering a state of decline.

While these findings are interesting, though, the most important result from this study was that the researchers obtained a simple relationship that accurately describes the evolution of the vortices' intensity. This relationship can be used to determine the maximum intensity of a vortex and the time it takes to reach it. Needless to say, this finding may be crucial when making weather predictions for hurricanes and other major storms.

In fact, the researchers have already shown that the results can be applied to real tropical cyclones. They used the same analysis on approximately 150 tropical cyclones in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In the end, they found that the relationship held true for the low-pressure systems.

The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.