Hurricanes Could be Tamed by Offshore Wind Farms [VIDEO]

Offshore wind turbines may be capable of disrupting hurricanes before they reach land, potentially saving lives and money, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change. 

Using a sophisticated computer simulation, Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, was able to test what would happen if a hurricane encountered a large array of offshore wind turbines.

The model assumed an enormous offshore wind farm stretching for miles along the coast, which was presented with a powerful hurricane. The model predicted that the wind turbines could reduce peak wind speeds by 92 mph and decrease storm surge by as much as 79 percent.

The model simulated three hurricanes, Sandy and Isaac, which, respectively, struck the Northeast Coast and and the New Orleans area in 2012, and hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.

"We found that when wind turbines are present, they slow down the outer rotation winds of a hurricane," Jacobson said. "This feeds back to decrease wave height, which reduces movement of air toward the center of the hurricane, increasing the central pressure, which in turn slows the winds of the entire hurricane and dissipates it faster."

Current wind turbines can withstand wind speeds exceeding 110 mph, about the strength of a category 3 hurricane.

The model revealed that an array of 78,000 wind turbines off the New Orleans coast would have significantly weakened the hurricane before it made landfall, reducing its speed by as much as 98 mph and dramatically lowering the storm surge as well.

For Hurricane Sandy, the model revealed that a large wind farm would have reduced the hurricane's speed by as much as 87 mph and decreased storm surge by 34 percent.

Of course, installing thousands of wind turbines offshore will be no easy task, sure to be faced by numerous political, economic and logistical hurdles.

Currently, Jacobson said there is political resistance to installing a few hundred offshore wind turbines, let alone a tens of thousands. However, he thinks that economic damages caused by hurricanes will be greater than the cost of installing large wind farms offshore, and that policy makers will be incentivize development.

Hurricane Sandy alone did roughly $82 billion in damage across three states. Wind farms, Jacobson said, would eventually pay for themselves in the long run through energy generation and emitting less pollution into the environment.

"The turbines will also reduce damage if a hurricane comes through," Jacobson said. "These factors, each on their own, reduce the cost to society of offshore turbines and should be sufficient to motivate their development."