Weather Control 101: Understanding Artificial Rain’s Impact

Artificial Rain Explained: How Weather Control Works and Its Lasting Impact

Where the idea of commanding rainfall used to be part of ancient rituals, now it has turned into a scientific process of artificial rain or cloud seeding. It is an interesting technology that is still in its developmental stages, but it gives humankind a very captivating snapshot of the growing capacity that mankind has in being connected with and possibly able to control natural phenomenon. Now, with the world experiencing climate change and water shortage, it is important to know how it works and its multidimensional impact.

Science Behind the Drops: Work of Artificial Rain-

Artificial rain is basically a matter of adding materials to clouds in order to stimulate their rains. Cloud seeding is the most popular one and in this approach small planes or ground generators are used to release such agents as silver iodine, dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) or even common salt into the clouds that already exist.  These agents are cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) or ice nuclei (IN).

Essentially, the clouds are only aggregates of small water particles or pieces of ice floating in the air. To precipitate, these water droplets must increase to a sufficient surface area to defeat possible atmospheric updrafts and fall to earth. Under natural conditions any dust in the air or pollen provides CCN on which water vapor can condense. Cloud seeding basically takes care of this by giving excessive supply of these nuclei.

When silver iodide (which has a crystal shape similar to ice) is released into cold clouds (the clouds that are having the super cooled water droplets lower than 0 C), these super cooled water droplets freeze and become an ice crystal and subsequently grow rapidly. They are known as ice crystals and this is where they are taken down by gravity where they melt to form raindrops. Hygroscopic substances such as salt dissolve water vapour in warmer clouds and create bigger droplets, which merge together and then precipitate as rain.

Implication and Implications: A Two-Fold Cloud-

The effects of the artificial rain technology are a riddle of both good and worrisome issues.

Opportunities

– Hydropower Generation: For nations that depend on hydropower generation, increased rainfall in the areas where hydropower water is sourced can lead to stable energy generation.
– Pollution Clean-Up: Those areas with extreme air pollution may eventually see artificial rain as only a temporary solution to “wash-off” pollutants from the human atmosphere.

Major Risks and Concerns

– Efficiency and Quantifiable: The question of the efficiency of cloud seeding remains a hotly debated scientific discussion topic. Although some scientists produce studies that show cloud seeding works, the great difficulty of solidifying that the rain had no chance of falling naturally is problematic; cloud seeding is contingent on cloud type, environmental conditions, and the relation of the seeding agent.

– Ethical and Legal: Questions arise such as, “Who owns the rain?”; When a country does cloud seeding and “steals” rain that would have precipitated in some other location, does this violate another’s water rights? These questions become knotty legal and ethical questions especially regarding transboundary river basins.

– Ecological Issues: Very little is understood about what the dispersal of chemicals into the atmosphere (such as silver iodide) determines its long-term effects. Concerns include ecological damage and accumulation into water systems.

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– Unnatural Outcomes: Changes to weather patterns, even if only locally will have unintended effects downstream, and will likely change regional climate leading to draughts in surrounding areas or alters natural weather cycles.

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