hurricane modification

Would-be hurricane fighters hoping to stop a future Katrina before it makes landfall should aim to wound, not kill. The goal should be to re-route hurricanes and ease their fury, rather than try to stop them forming in the first place.

Improvements to methods of tracking and recording weather patterns finally make it possible to properly test technologies designed to alter them, say experts. Weather modification attempts to bring rain to dry areas, or divert storms. But decades of tests have generated only heated arguments and even lawsuits. All techniques developed so far are essentially unproven. But new weather tracking technology can change that, said delegates at an American Meteorological Society meeting on weather modification this week.