The first time I’ve heard of such a thing, I was flipping through my television and stopped at The History Channel. I’ve heard of humans’ unintentionally altering weather through global warming before, but I’ve never heard of anything like this. I continued to watch; I was fascinated.
A process in which we can intentionally alter weather is called Cloud Seeding. Cloud Seeding uses silver iodine to mimic the ice nuclei that allows for the growth of water droplets increasing participation in the projected area. According to science.howstuffworks.com there are three types of cloud seeding, Static, Dynamic and Hygroscopic. Static Cloud Seeding involves the spreading of silver iodine into the clouds providing a crystal around which moisture can condense. Moisture is already present in the clouds the silver iodine essentially makes the rain clouds more effective in dispensing participation. Dynamic Cloud Seeding’s aim is to enhance vertical air currents to encourage more water to pass through the clouds; it uses about one hundred times more ice crystals than Static. This type of Cloud Seeding is more complex because it depends on a sequence of events working properly. If one event fails it can ruin the entire process making it less dependable than Static Cloud Seeding. Hygroscopic Cloud Seeding importantly differs from the other two methods. It dispenses salts through flares or explosives in the lower parts of the clouds allowing the salts to grow in size as water joins with them (science.howstuffworks).
Cloud seeding began as a United States Military project. Records indicate attempts began as early as the 1830s but wasn’t successful until 1915. In its first occurrence, the purpose was to end a drought in San Diego; The Cloud Seeding was led by Charles Hatfield, an American ‘rainmaker.’ In result, San Diego had a seventeen day down pour that totaled twenty-eight inches. The downpour had unintended consequences and turned fatal washing out more than one hundred bridges, made roads impassable over a huge area, destroyed communications lines, and left thousands homeless (globalresearch.ca).
The most recent usage of Cloud seeding was reported in China in 2008. The government used 1,104 cloud seeding missiles to remove the threat of rain ahead of the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing.
Today, Cloud Seeding is controversial. Cloud Seeding may not be always successfully launch in its targeted and may cause the intended effects in an area different than the desired target area. Many ethical concerns arise in that activities conducted for the benefit of some may have an undesirable impact on others (ametsoc).
We may not have everything figured out when it comes to modifying the weather, but just the near discovery is progress among us. Millions of dollars are still being spent in research and testing to perfect weather modification such as Cloud Seeding.
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2010plannedweathermod_cloudseeding_amsstatement.html
I thought this was a very interesting blog post. This made me think of man made snow! There is a mountain near me called Spring Mountain. They are open all year round. They often put down man made snow. They use a process called snowmaking, which “is the production of snow by forcing water and pressurized air through a “snow gun” or “snow cannon”, on ski slopes” (Wikipedia).