Curiosity Bites : Cloud Seeding
Do you fantasise about a wedding day with a stunning blue sky and no rain With the use of cloud seeding, a standard practise in weather modification, a luxury vacation firm promises to accomplish precisely that for a price. The company ensures a cloud-free wedding day by creating artificial clouds and making it rain a day before the big day.
Cloud seeding was purportedly used to prevent rain during the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding in 2012, as well as the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies.
However, the technology that underpins this new luxury wedding craze isn’t quite cutting-edge. Most significantly, it is tied to processes that define the health of both our world and ourselves.
From Mali to Thailand, parched countries have relied on cloud seeding for decades to bring rain in the face of scorching temperatures, water shortages, and droughts, as well as to avoid destructive hailstorms.
Cloud seeding has been used in the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, and other mountainous areas of the United States since the 1950s. In dry regions, China is thought to be reliant on cloud seeding.
The United Arab Emirates has been utilising cloud seeding since the 1990s and is regarded as a leader in rain enhancement technology, with the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP) receiving USD 5 million in 2015.
So, what is cloud seeding, exactly?
Cloud seeding is a technique for manipulating rain in a controlled manner.
Man-made precipitation enhancement, artificial weather modification, rainmaking, and other terms have been used to describe it.
Using a special aircraft, rockets, or ground-based dispersion systems, the method sprays particles of salts like silver iodide and chloride on clouds.
These salt particles operate as a core (cloud condensation nuclei or ice-nucleating particles) that attract water vapour within the cloud, which then condenses into water droplets, resulting in raindrop creation.
Cloud seeding aims to change the cloud’s natural evolution in order to increase precipitation, suppress hail, dissipate fog, and lessen lightning.
Rainmaking dates back to 1946, when General Electric (GE) scientists Vincent Schaefer and Bernard Vonnegu successfully seeded a cloud with dry ice and then saw the world’s first artificial snowfall fall from the cloud’s base.
Schaefer and GE test pilot Curtis Talbot, according to the firm, hopped into a small Fairchild plane and attempted to seed a cloud drifting above Schenectady, New York, with dry ice.Since then, Schaefer has been known as the Snow Man. The team persevered, and Bernard Vonnegut enhanced the process by inducing snow with silver iodide, a material with crystals that are physically similar to ice.
Since then, cloud seeding has become a widespread way of rain enhancement, even in the world’s most parched places, thanks to global scientific research and development.
According to a 2017 poll of World Meteorological Organization members active in weather modification, most cloud seeding actions are carried out in response to concerns of water shortages hurting agriculture and other societal requirements.
Cloud seeding initiatives are underway in at least 56 countries, including India.
Is cloud seeding practised in India?
India sown the seeds in the field of rainmaking six years after Schaefer flew into a cloud and laced it with dry ice.
S. K. Banerji, the first Indian director-general of the Indian Meteorological Department, experimented with cloud seeding with salt and silver iodide using hydrogen-filled balloons launched from the ground in 1952.
In 1951, Tata companies experimented with cloud seeding in the Western Ghats region, utilising ground-based silver iodide machines.
During 1957–1966 in north India, the Rain and Cloud Physics Research (RCPR) unit of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune conducted randomised warm cloud modification experiments using salt seeding.India tried in this direction during the next three decades in Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh.
The Union Ministry of Earth Sciences has been investing in data collection and experimentation for cloud seeding research in India since 2018.
If states choose to use cloud seeding as a technique to boost rainwater, research conducted by the IITM in Pune, particularly in the previous two years (2018 and 2019), will result in a white paper containing scientific facts on the ground.
While there are no plans for a national cloud seeding programme, the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences has already spent Rs 45 crore on research in 2018. The development will continue in 2019 at a cost of Rs 100 crore.
The IITM has launched a nationwide programme to advance aerosol and cloud microphysics observations over the Indian region, which can be utilised to develop cloud seeding standards.
The Cloud-Aerosol Interaction and Precipitation Enhancement Experiment (CAIPEEX) will study aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions in the pre-monsoon and monsoon climates. Due to a lack of rainfall, the country is experiencing a drought and a water crisis. In 2019, Maharashtra and Karnataka are experimented with cloud seeding. Since the beginning of the monsoon on June 1 2019, the country has received 17 percent less rain than typical.
What effect does cloud seeding have?
Despite its growing popularity, cloud seeding still has a lot of unknowns. Scientists are still debating the technology’s success and long-term consequences. The National Research Council (NRC) of the United States published a paper in 2003 called Critical Issues in Weather Modification Research, which underlined the need to resolve fundamental ambiguities in our understanding of cloud seeding. Studies have urged for more research on the efficacy of cloud seeding as well as a quantification of its influence.
For example, a recent attempt in Sri Lanka to generate rain during a severe drought failed, sparking criticism and experts urging for scientific analyses before costly long-term schemes are considered.The government, on the other hand, has embraced the proposal.
Heavy rain generated by cloud seeding is reported to have caused road accidents in the United Arab Emirates.
However, researchers are forging ahead, delving at drones, nanotechnology, and other fields to strengthen cloud seeding science. Governments will be on the hunt for newer and better ways to cool things down as climate change disrupts rainfall patterns and brings hotter weather to different parts of the world, according to experts.
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