Scientists believe that it may be possible to “kill” a tornado. Space satellites could be used to fire beams of microwave energy towards the base of a thunderstorm. The theory is that this would heat up the cool downdraft of air that helps create the tornado, effectively knocking it out. This sounds very much like science fiction, and many scientists claim that it could never work.
The most intense tornadoes emerge from what are called supercell thunderstorms. For such a storm to form, you first “need the ingredients for a regular thunderstorm,” says Brooks. Those ingredients include warm moisture near the surface and relatively cold, dry air above. “The warm air will be buoyant, and like a hot-air balloon it will rise,” says Brooks.
A supercell requires more: winds that increase in strength and change direction with height. “Then the updraft tends to rotate, and that makes a supercell,” explains Brooks. The supercell churns high in the air and, in about 30 percent of cases; it leads to the formation of a tornado below it. This happens when air descending from the supercell causes rotation near the ground.
Even then, “we still don’t know why some thunderstorms create tornadoes while others don’t,” tornado-chaser Tim Samaras said in early 2013. Samaras was a scientist and National Geographic grantee who was killed by a twister on May 31, 2013, in El Reno, Oklahoma.
Brooks says scientists believe strong changes in winds in the first kilometer of the atmosphere and high relative humidity are important for the formation of tornadoes. He adds that there also needs to be a downdraft in just the right part of the storm.
Tornado formation also requires a “Goldilocks” situation, in which air must be cold but not too cold. It should be a few degrees more frigid than surrounding air, Brooks says.
He adds, “We don’t understand how tornadoes die: Eventually the air gets too cold and it chokes off the inflow of new air into the storm, but we don’t know the details.”
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