How much energy does a hurricane release ?
Hurricanes can be thought of as a heat engine; obtaining heat from the warm, humid air over the tropical ocean, and releasing this heat through the condensation of water vapor into water droplets in deep thunderstorms of the eyewall and rainbands, then giving off a cold exhaust in the upper levels of the troposphere (~12 km/8 mi up).
Hurricanes can be thought of, to a first approximation, as a heat engine; obtaining its heat input through the warm humid air over the tropical ocean, releasing this heat through the condensation of water vapor into water droplets in deep thunderstorms of the eyewall and rainbands, then giving off a cold exhaust in the upper levels of the troposphere (~12 km/8 mi up). One can look at the energetics of a hurricane in two ways: * the total amount of energy released by the condensation of water droplets or … * the amount of kinetic energy generated to maintain the strong swirling winds of the hurricane (Emanuel 1999). It turns out that the vast majority of the heat released in the condensation process is used to cause rising motions in the thunderstorms and only a small portion drives the storm’s horizontal winds.
