Drones Are Zapping Clouds With Electricity To Create Rain In UAE Project (usatoday.com) 45
turp182 shares a report from USA Today: [T]he UAE is now testing a new method that has drones fly into clouds to give them an electric shock to trigger rain production [...]. The project is getting renewed interest after the UAE's National Center of Meteorology recently published a series of videos on Instagram of heavy rain in parts of the country. Water gushed past trees, and cars drove on rain-soaked roads. The videos were accompanied by radar images of clouds tagged "#cloudseeding." The Independent reports recent rain is part of the drone cloud seeding project.
The UAE oversaw more than 200 cloud seeding operations in the first half of 2020, successfully creating excess rainfall, the National News reported. There have been successes in the U.S., as well as China, India, and Thailand. Long-term cloud seeding in the mountains of Nevada have increased snowpack by 10% or more each year, according to research published by the American Meteorological Society. A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in Wyoming resulted in 5-10% increases in snowpack, according to the State of Wyoming. According to a researcher that worked on the drone initiative, "the aim of the UAE's project is to change the balance of electrical charge on the cloud droplets, causing water droplets to clump together and fall as rain when they are big enough."
The UAE oversaw more than 200 cloud seeding operations in the first half of 2020, successfully creating excess rainfall, the National News reported. There have been successes in the U.S., as well as China, India, and Thailand. Long-term cloud seeding in the mountains of Nevada have increased snowpack by 10% or more each year, according to research published by the American Meteorological Society. A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in Wyoming resulted in 5-10% increases in snowpack, according to the State of Wyoming. According to a researcher that worked on the drone initiative, "the aim of the UAE's project is to change the balance of electrical charge on the cloud droplets, causing water droplets to clump together and fall as rain when they are big enough."
Interesting...? (Score:2)
Re: Interesting...? (Score:4, Interesting)
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If downwind is the ocean, no problem. If it's (commonly) a mountain range where few people live, then small problem.
Re: Interesting...? (Score:4, Informative)
If downwind is the ocean, no problem. If it's (commonly) a mountain range where few people live, then small problem.
The winds in the UAE blow from the NW, which is the Persian Gulf. Especially during the summer, these winds contain a high amount of humidity, so getting some rain out of them may be plausible.
The area downwind most like to be deprived of water is the Al Hajar Mountains [wikipedia.org] of northeast Oman.
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Do we have clear evidence that this is true? I mean, its not like raining destroys mass. The same amount of water is still there somewhere. Some of it will go down in streams but in an area like this most of it will evaporate, especially as it is used by vegetation in growing. Depending on timing, heat patterns and so on, this might actually lead to more rain downstream in the long term. Adding green matter to the desert should improve overall climate which was one of the previous failed aims of the "g
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Re:Cilmate manipulation eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that we *want* to control the weather, it's that we *have* to.
Well, we could stop fucking it up and try to revert the damage (or at least we could've tried before it was too late). Or the humans living in the areas that are becoming unfit for human life or dangerous because of climate change could relocate. But humans never want to change a thing and insist on their right to keep doing more of same, even if it flies in the face of common sense or clashes against reality.
So if nature doesn't want to provide anymore, we just arm-wrestle it into submission. That's what humans do.
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Re: Cilmate manipulation eh? (Score:2)
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> ... the humans living in the areas that are becoming unfit for human life...
The Gulf states are already 'unfit for human life' and always have been .... without modern air conditioning. ... and it doesn't require millions of residents and ....
There is 'nothing' there apart from Oil and Gas (and some nice Scuba diving)
an extravagant lifestyle to extract it. When, eventually, the energy reservoirs are gone (or unprofitable), people may find they need to move on
SD
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Not quite true: the bedouins used to eke out a living for centuries in the deep desert with their camels and tents and shit before the age of oil. It's become unfit for human life (as in deadly, however used to the heat and prepared your are, if you go there unaided) for a few weeks a year only fairly recently.
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And it's been the most successful survival strategy any organism has hit upon. Except maybe the strategy of being something we want around, or something that does well around us. Wherever humans have carved out a place to thrive, you'll find dogs, cats and rats thriving alongside them.
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It cuts both ways though. I currently live way up north in Scandinavia, and the winters have been getting milder, which is a bit of a blessing really. Trouble is, the mosquitoes are also out of control in the summer.
There's only so much (Score:4, Interesting)
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I prefer the cockney version: Th' rine in spine stiys minely on th' pline
You think they care? (Score:2)
Its all about money in the arabian peninsula and I'm-all-right-jack and everyone else can go f*ck themselves.
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Which would be the desired effect in some cases.
Thunderclouds (Score:2)
Re: Thunderclouds (Score:2)
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i was wondering about this, especially with the list of other countries (US included) that are doing this and reporting success.
Anyway, climate change is expected to increase water vapor in the air, and the vapor is itself a greenhouse gas.
So creating rain may to some degree mitigate higher water vapor. Or at least there is enough to go around for such activities.
Until we get much higher levels of control that is.
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While true,
1) Most rain falls in the oceans and rainfall isn’t particularly deterministic, so this isn’t a zero-sum game where making it rain on your country necessarily means less rain for specific other country. It means less rain elsewhere overall, but not anywhere else in particular.
2) Any problem of this sort is already FAR more true of existing aquatic resources such as lakes and rivers, which follow set paths. Removing water from them has consequent effects on everyone downstream. Which i
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Work on this... (Score:3, Interesting)
their partners have FAR mroe than drones... (Score:1)
https://www.reddit.com/r/consp... [reddit.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/consp... [reddit.com]
Thundergun! (Score:2)
NO MAN LEFT BEHIND!
The Independent reported no such thing. (Score:5, Informative)
The Independent reports recent rain is part of the drone cloud seeding project.
The Independent reported no such thing. In fact, it reports that electrical charging of clouds with drones is yet to be attempted.
Clouds were seeded [wikipedia.org] with "chemicals such as silver iodide", dispersed from airplanes.
The cloud seeding operations work through manned aircraft firing chemicals such as silver iodide into the clouds in order to cause increased precipitation.
The National reported the heavy rainfall caused waterfalls to appear in the city of Al Ain and made driving conditions hazardous.
In an effort to curb the country's sinking water table, the UAE invested $15 million in nine different rain-making projects in 2017.
One system set to be trialled in the UAE uses drones to shoot electrical charge into the clouds to increase precipitation.
As for the science... it seems to be at best a rather theoretical concept.
https://royalsocietypublishing... [royalsocie...ishing.org]
And a rather more cautious one, with the addition of further authors to the later studies.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/a... [aps.org]
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/... [harvard.edu]
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/... [harvard.edu]
This will steal rain (Score:1)
Stealing rain comment #500 (Score:1)
Perhaps a stupid question, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
In light of all the massive rainfalls, etc. as of late. Can you seed heavy rain clouds or even hurricanes before they come on coast, therefore dumping most of the water at sea, rather then flooding areas?
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It's a good question. The idea was tried but it didn't work. This article [scientificamerican.com] has a good overview of the history and science of cloud seeding.
In 1947, Project Cirrus--a collaboration between GE and the U.S. military--made history as scientists' first attempt to modify a hurricane. On Oct. 13, the operation dumped nearly 200 pounds of dry ice into a cyclone that was churning off the coast of Florida.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the federal government continued to experiment with the idea of cloud seeding hurricanes--but to little avail. Scientists eventually concluded that it wasn't effective.
Tesla was on to something? (Score:1)
I want one... (Score:2)
My version of opinion (Score:1)