Could We Control the Weather to Solve Extreme Droughts?

As severe droughts threaten regions across the world, scientists have proposed a solution that sounds like science fiction: What if we just make it rain ourselves?

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While this may seem like a far-fetched fix, this idea is actually based on technology that’s been around since the 1940s. It’s called cloud seeding, and it is what it sounds like: Tiny particles are released into the air, either by an aircraft or an automated machine.

This technique relies on the answer to one key question: where do clouds come from? The simple answer is that clouds have nuclei, but not the kind that atoms have. Water evaporates into the atmosphere as part of the water cycle. That evaporated water accumulates around micro-scale solid or liquid particles made of dust or pollen...or even bacteria.

Does cloud seeding upset the balance of nature even more than climate-change induced drought already has? Some scientists worry that increasing the volume of clouds in one place will pull moisture from another area, interrupting rain that could have fallen somewhere else…but again, the dynamics at play in clouds are so complex that it’s really hard to say where rain would have fallen if we had left everything alone.

The fact remains that by 2030, almost half the world’s population will live in highly water stressed areas due to climate change.

#cloudseeding #climatechange #drought #science #seeker #elements

Read More:

Make it rain: US states embrace 'cloud seeding' to try to conquer drought
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/23/us-stated-cloud-seeding-weather-modification
"The stresses of drought, upon water supplies for drinking and to supply the west’s vast agricultural systems, have prompted eight states to look to a form of weather modification called cloud seeding to stave off the worst."

Does cloud seeding really work? An experiment above Idaho suggests humans can turbocharge snowfall
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/does-cloud-seeding-really-work-experiment-above-idaho-suggests-humans-can-turbocharge
"At first, there was nothing. “The radar can only see [water] particles that are big enough, and these clouds had tiny droplets not detectable by radar,” Friedrich says. “Suddenly, we saw lines appear. It was really astonishing.” The zig-zagged lines matched the flight path of the first plane. Within these lines, the cloud’s water particles were getting bigger as they hit the silver iodide and froze."

Bringing in the rain: Has the UAE’s cloud-seeding program gone too far?
https://wired.me/science/environment/cloud-seeding-uae-dubai-rain-floods/
"Titanium dioxide nanoparticles are hardly the first potentially toxic material to be used in cloud seeding; silver iodide, the most common material used for seeding could clouds, is also toxic in high concentrations."

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