Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Thoughts on hazardous events.

There is a minor news this morning reporting that “a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia in the Banda sea area on Tuesday, an official at the national earthquake center said, but there were no reports of damage or a tsunami.”

There was another news yesterday regarding hurricanes advising that “meteorologists know certain basics are needed for hurricanes to form: deep pools of warm water; warm, moist air; low air pressure. But all of those conditions can be in place, and still a storm won't start spinning.”

In both cases there seem to be a dilemma in connection with our supposedly well-known knowledge regarding these potentially disastrous natural events – the nature is not cooperating: they happen when we re not prepared, but not happening when we think they might!

In both of the tsunami and hurricane cases, there seems to be plentiful of equipments as well as research funding available. Although there are always complains of not enough equipment and still grossly under funded. Appositely my favorite study of freaque wave events got basically nothing – neither observational equipments nor relevant funding to pursue. Nevertheless with only a few conjectures, some good supply of satellite pictures, and some computer simulations, there’s intrepid prediction that freaque wave will be predictable in 10 years! I wish them luck and I can’t wait for that day to arrive, if it ever will!

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