Atlantic Oil
Atlantic Oil
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What would happen if the Atlantic Ocean was covered in an oil film? Would hurricanes still occur?
Assuming you meant the tropical Atlantic Ocean and that the oil film was permanently present...if the oil film were to successfully stop evaporation of ocean water, I would think it would stop hurricanes/tropical cyclones from forming. However, aside from likely being ecologically unsound, I think it would severely disrupt the water cycle in the tropical regions and it would severely alter the way that heat is transported away from the tropics and into the mid-latitude regions of the globe. If no more evaporation took place in the tropics, then I would suspect that rainfall would become very rare--turning much of the land in tropical regions into desert.
There was mention of a temporary (I think) oil film by Ross Hoffman in this article, but it was only referred to in one sentence. If the idea had been more advanced, I would speculate that he would have written more about it here (near the bottom of the page).
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000593AE-704B-1151-B57F83414B7F0000&pageNumber=5&catID=2
My take is that, for the temporary oil film idea, they've not figured out how to apply it over several hundred square miles and how to keep the film's surface intact under the stress of winds greater than 74mph and seas where waves can be 50-90 feet tall.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5b.html
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050804_waves.html