Thoughts on Hurricane Heat Transfer

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Thoughts on Hurricane Heat Transfer

#1 Postby storm_in_a_teacup » Sat Nov 01, 2025 5:39 pm

I saw this video a couple of days ago



Link: https://youtu.be/yZD-4bO7RzQ

Most of it is pretty basic but the beginning where it says that hurricanes are responsible for 5-6% of the heat transfer between the tropics and poles blew my mind. It doesn't sound like a lot but when you consider how just increasing the global average temperature by a couple of degrees has many deleterious effects it kinda sounds like if you got rid of hurricanes something bad would happen.

This in turn reminded me of plate tectonics, specifically the carbonate-silicate cycle that regulates Earth's greenhouse effect in the long term:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate%E2%80%93silicate_cycle

Subduction is one of the main forces driving this cycle, as it is for plate tectonics in general. But in most subduction zones the tectonic plates only move during massive earthquakes. And of course volcanism is necessary for the cycle as well. So a world without earthquakes or volcanoes would be a geologically dead world without any regulatory mechanisms for its environment. A world like Mercury. Or Mars.

In some sense natural disasters are the price you pay for a habitable world.

If the planet is uninhabitable all the time, then there's no events to label as disasters. Just...nothing.
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I know I can't straddle the atmosphere...just a tiny storm in your teacup, girl.

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