Typhoon Tamer

Thousands of people work every day to produce weather forecasts. This work, even with modern methods of studying the atmosphere, is not highly accurate. The reason is that many processes occurring in the atmosphere are still poorly understood.

Employee of the Institute of Physics V.A. Foka at the Physics Faculty of St. Petersburg State University, weather analyst of the Russian Olympic sailing team Sergei VASILIEV is convinced that modern ideas about the movement of air masses do not reflect the physics of the processes taking place and that it is his discovery that will allow weather forecasters to consider themselves forecasters. The Vremya Novostey correspondent became interested in the scientist’s scientific developments.

— Sergei Leonidovich, do you really think that meteorology has reached a dead end at this stage?

- The fact is that pressure and wind play a role in weather formation. But so far no one has been able to measure the characteristics of the latter. It is believed to blow along an isobar (line of equal pressure of atmospheric fronts), and gusts are observed from time to time. In fact, the wind pulsates, constantly changing speed and direction. But no one is able to count the pulsations. Therefore, they are averaged over speed and direction.

- So, no one has ever dealt with the wind?

- We did, of course. In the 19th century, two directions emerged. One school is based on the idea of ​​the primacy of the pressure field. It has been developed into modern weather forecasting methods. The other - the so-called Bergen - is built on the representation of the wind field. She did not develop. This is explained by the difficulty of physical measurements. But the undoubted and main success of the Bergen school was the description of a stable vortex. As laboratory experiments have shown, it has properties that are in many ways characteristic of an elastic body, for example, it is compressible. And modern theory uses the idea of ​​an ideal incompressible fluid. The ideas of the Bergen School were suppressed because it was easier to consider pressure as the primary factor in describing the physics of wind.

- And what did we get?

- Do you know who ordered the world's first computer?

- Cybernetics.

-- No. Meteorologists. They made their first forecast back in the century before last using abacus. He didn't justify himself. And then the weather forecasters said: “We would have computers, and then we would give the world confidence in the future.” Since then they got a computer, then thousands more computers. Then they became more powerful, but this is like a mathematical period - the strongest processors can only get closer to the ideal, but will never achieve it.

-Which way did you go?

-- In 1970, while working on a diploma at the Department of Hydrometeorology of the Arctic Faculty of the Academy named after Admiral S.O. Makarov, I discovered the effect of turbulent friction. Later I was engaged in theoretical and experimental research. I worked as a weather forecaster in the Arctic, Antarctica, and the tropics. He studied the dynamics of convective clouds under the guidance of Professor Nikolai Shishkin. During this time, I was able to identify the role of the turbulent friction effect in weather formation. As a result, I returned back to the point where the Bergen and modern schools diverged. I gave a generalized solution to the original Novier-Stokes equations (a system of differential equations describing the movement of a viscous fluid - Ed. ), completed theoretical work, wrote a complete theory of regular vortex structures.

-What is the essence of your theory?

-- The air movement is vortex in nature. And this is precisely what causes pulsations, strengthening or weakening of the wind, changing directions and speeds. Vortex structures are subject to precise calculations. Having an idea of ​​this, a temperature map, cloud data, it is possible to describe the exact movement of the air mass.

- What will your discovery give us?

-- Understanding the nature of vortex structures has made it possible, for example, to explain the metal fatigue that is observed in space shuttles and aircraft in high latitudes and the tropics. In the first case, metal fatigue is observed, in the second - not. The reason is that, when flying at high latitudes, the frequency of vibrations occurring on the wing reaches resonance with the body, but if the flight takes place in the tropics, then resonance does not occur. This is explained by the fact that the linear size of regular vortex structures in the tropics is twice as large, since the thickness of the atmosphere in the tropics is twice as large as in high latitudes. But these assertions still need to be investigated and proven.

- And in practice?

— Well, first of all, I am a weather analyst of wind conditions and a forecaster for the Russian Olympic sailing team. If I had made inaccurate forecasts, I wouldn't be there. For example, in China I “cancelled” two rains... and in general, local meteorologists had many inaccuracies. Literally, by assessing the cloud cover, I can tell the athletes where to steer to catch the right wind.

In addition, I have the only patent in the world for creating artificial typhoons. This technology is developed solely based on my theory. It aims to protect farmland from typhoons. The method is active control of the process of releasing instability energy in the atmosphere. As a result of using my technology, the typhoon will not cause destruction and loss of life.

- Shall we summarize?

- For us, turbulence as a random process has ceased to exist, since the complete theory of regular vortex structures allows analysts to describe the movements of liquids and gases by the method of “smooth” solving the original Novier-Stokes equations. This circumstance opens up fundamentally new possibilities for the further development of hydrodynamic weather forecasts.

Interviewed by Mikhail TELEKHOV, St. Petersburg