Bill Gates targets hurricanes

              Hurricane Katrina intensifies over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico

Microsoft's Bill Gates, one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution, has now set out on a new venture, to fight hurricanes.

Bill Gates has teamed up with scientists and inventors to work out a plan to lessen the strength of hurricanes.

Because hurricanes thrive on the warm waters of the world's oceans, the goal is to lessen the strength of hurricanes by making the waters much cooler in the path of the storms.

 Gates's plan would be carried out by positioning hundreds of barges in the path of hurricanes, in which the warm waters would feed down one pipe to depths where the temperatures are much cooler, then another pipe would pump the cooler water to the surface, thus weakening tropical systems as they move over that area.

This is similar to a process called  upwelling,

Upwelling cold water inhibits the formation and or strengthening of tropical cyclones. (hurricanes) 

 Several reasons why hurricanes weaken:

• Increase of upper level wind shear
• Movement over land
• Movement over cooler water
• Drier air entraining into the storm
• Temporary breakdown in eye and eyewall structure (eyewall replacement cycle)
• The storm upwelling cooler water