7 ms·

Cloud seeding catching on amid Rocky Mountain drought

48 points by hhs 3y ago

FreshStart 3y ago
Question : can vortex cannons be used to create rain drop seeds?
LostLocalMan 3y ago
With all the talk about RHEL and centos/rocky/alma OS I was really confused by this title
- redundantly 3y ago
  Haha. NASA seeding the Rocky Linux project amid RHEL source code drought!
  - dpflan 3y ago
    "RHEL", Is it pronounced something like "R-Hail"?
    - itscrush 3y ago
      I've always vocalized this as "Rail" for RHEL.
EA-3167 3y ago
It's been ages since I looked into cloud seeding, so maybe my knowledge is just incredibly out of date... but is there any high quality evidence that it works? I mean, to be clear, working at the scale required for agriculture. By the same token if it does work, doesn't this open a potentially brutal avenue for hydrological warfare/competition? Edit: Great responses, I learned a lot, thanks!
- earthscienceman 3y ago
  I'm an atmospheric scientist who has written/contributed to papers on cloud microphysics, albeit in the Arctic. I have not directly researched cloud seeding but do have the background to understand the dynamics at play. The answer is, at agricultural scales, absolutely not. What I think is interesting though is that your comment on "hydrological warfare/competition" is extremely relevant. Geo-engineering is almost always a hack with "no free lunch" impacts. For cloud seeding specifically, there is only ever so much water vapor available in the atmosphere and the efficacy of seeding depends on the dynamics/microphysics at play in the region of interest. If there is a lack of the specific aerosols necessary for condensation and precipitation, cloud seeding has shown to be effective to the tune of 5-15% increase in precip in certain regions. Water vapor doesn't like to hang out available in the atmosphere in large quantities so squeezing it out by forcing precipitation via "seeding" isn't really a reasonable concept. But to the degree that you do succeed, you are extracting water vapor that would have been transported by the atmosphere to other neighboring regions. While there is little evidence that cloud seeding can be done at-scale, in a world where someone comes up with a novel+clever idea this would mean that the impacts on precipitation in other regions would be significant. Again, no free lunch. It's not a stretch to imagine turning that into a competitive advantage or using it as a warfare tactic. If there were large bands of moisture just waiting to fall out of the sky we would be living in a very different climate. Aerosols are far too common on earth. In fact, the Arctic is one of the only places seeding makes a lot of sense with supercooled water and a distinct lack of aerosols in the clean environment. But in my research I have yet to come across much agriculture up there much less agrarian societies ;)
  - crznp 3y ago
    If we imagine that excess water from Wyoming is used to grow crops in California, it seems reasonable to assume that it would be less moisture/precipitation for Nebraska. But if it is used to grow wheat in Colorado (because the obligations to lower-basin states need to be met regardless and the increased moisture allows more diversions across the continental divide), then it probably ends up evaporating anyway or else in the Platte River. It wouldn't be stealing moisture from Nebraska, they might actually benefit from it. Geo-engineering might not have a free lunch, but it also isn't a zero-sum game.
phkahler 3y ago
Those along the Colorado River complain if upstream takes out too much water. Now they want to steal water from the air that belongs to the Midwest? J.K. but still...
ortusdux 3y ago
Noaa has a great database of all permits issued for the last 50 years. > As part of Public Law 92-205 (1972), all non-Federal weather modification activities must be reported to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, via the NOAA Weather Program Office. Below is a list of these reports and is updated on a quarterly basis. https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Weather-Modification-Project-Reports https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Wea... This appears to be the permit for the activates in the article. (PDF): https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWAQ/Weather_Modification_Project/FY23/Q1/2022UTHU-1.pdf https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWA... While I was looking I found this permit, which is interesting: https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWAQ/Weather_Modification_Project/FY23/Q2/2023wmainitial.pdf https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWA... https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/09/make-sunsets-solar-geoengineering-climate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/0... https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/make-sunsets-monthly-so-high https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/make-sunsets-monthly-so-h... > "Iseman is the founder and CEO of Make Sunsets — a two-person firm that plans several more test flights this month. His start-up has triggered the worst fears of researchers who have struggled for decades to establish ground rules for solar geoengineering. The technology has almost always been seen as a last resort to counter runaway warming. Make Sunsets is not only promising to deploy this break-the-glass approach now — but to sell it for profit. Iseman, 39, acknowledges that he is, in many ways, a geoengineering novice. A former director of hardware for the start-up incubator Y Combinator, he got interested in the subject by reading Neal Stephenson’s novel “Termination Shock.”"
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ineedasername 3y ago
It seems like there are long term problems with this approach that will just cause bigger issues because seeding the clouds will either 1) Give you the water you were going to get anyway, only you get it a bit earlier, and assuming there are no other wider ripple effects of doing this (a huge assumption to make) then you're just going to wait even longer in between the seeded clouds and the next batch that weather patterns would serve up. So now you're even worse off when the seeded cloud water is used up and the interval to the next bit is extended [1] Or 2) You're taking water from clouds that would normally have dropped it elsewhere, which just shifts the problem by depriving some other region of the water it relies on. [1] Or 3) lots of other possibilities I'm not smart enough to think up because weather and climate systems are complicated and the laws around water rights are complicated and I have no domain expertise in either. Though I suppose that's the issue right there: If even I can see swiss cheese holes in the problems with this plan then it's bound to end poorly for someone. [1] I mean, I'm guessing there's only so much moisture in the air and that taking some out prematurely isn't likely to shift the overall system in a way that makes up for that gap. And even if it did it's still unlikely to preserve the system in a way that keeps the water flowing to where it would have gone without macroscopic human intervention.
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  >You're taking water from clouds that would normally have dropped it elsewhere, which just shifts the problem by depriving some other region of the water it relies on. The majority of rain falls over the ocean, so it may not be taking it from somewhere that needs more water.
  - gameshot911 3y ago
    But taking water in the Rockies will have comparatively little effect on rainfall in the oceans vs immediate surrounding geographies.
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    Sure, but in this case what they're taking is from clouds that are over land. I have a vague memory that western US weather patterns blow in from the pacific and drop it further east over the US, so an ocean drop may not be the destiny for this particular water. But I absolutely cannot assert this with any confidence without falling into the dunning-krueger hole. Although I do know just enough about water rights to know that doing this could get messy.
ngai_aku 3y ago
Anyone have a non-paywalled link? Tried piping it through wayback machine, but I still couldn’t get anything readable
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  https://archive.ph/kqewK https://archive.ph/kqewK
  - ngai_aku 3y ago
    Thank you! Interestingly, I think that link was blocked at the DNS level when using Private Relay. Managed to get it open though.
- k4rli 3y ago
  How is such content even allowed here? It's not available due to GDPR and paywalls.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
https://archive.ph/kqewK https://archive.ph/kqewK
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  I have SSL problems, but this also works: https://archive.is/kqewK https://archive.is/kqewK
cheekibreeki2 3y ago
I remember when cloud seeding was a conspiracy theory until the Chinese admitted doing it for the Olympics..
- chefandy 3y ago
  >> I remember when cloud seeding was a conspiracy theory until the Chinese admitted doing it for the Olympics.. For which Olympics? 1972? Here's an ABC nightly news feature story about cloud seeding, including a demo, from over a decade ago. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwonVY_cNS4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwonVY_cNS4
  - discodave 3y ago
    Beijing Olympics was 2008, that's 15 years ago. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23397205 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23397205
    - chefandy 3y ago
      That's totally different. They were trying to stop it from raining. Read the history section of the cloud seeding Wikipedia article.
- volleygman180 3y ago
  “Chemtrails” still has a negative connotation as a conspiracy theory, despite the fact that cloud seeding is literally the same thing
- 8note 3y ago
  What's the conspiracy exactly? Is it just a description of cloud seeding in Alberta? Cloud seeding in Alberta to reduce hail damage is well documented and well advertised
mistercheph 3y ago
No unforeseen and unintended environmentally catastrophic side-effects here folks!
NegativeLatency 3y ago
Is it really a drought if it lasts for 20 years? Sounds like previously unknown climate variability to me.
- notfish 3y ago
  One might even say that the long term weather patterns have shifted permanently. We should have a term for this, maybe something like climate change?
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Are we at a point where all weather events should be classified as climate change regardless of any proof or reason to do so? Some places are generally dryer than others and weather patterns aren’t restricted to small timescales just because that’d make things easier.
    - bayesianbot 3y ago
      There's a study[0] from 2022 that shows the western US megadrought was/is largely caused by human caused climate warming. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/us-west-megadrought-worst-1200-years-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/us-west-... (the first link in the article is the study, it's quite ugly so I used the article instead, but the study is worth reading)
firebirdn99 3y ago
Atmospheric science and chemistry is tough. Like others, I was always like why don't we have solutions to climate problems, it's the 21st century we have smartphones and all these cool apps! (lol) There should be a lot more private/public incentives or funding and leaders that push for more resources into this, so we make change kind of like SpaceX. Other questions I found out were difficult were if we can create clouds, and if we can create water, both artificially, and the resounding answer on the nets was NO, or we can but it is extremely dangerous, and not practical. But we must persist, and try again. edit: a cool article on history, and risks with cloud seeding -https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/dodging-silver-bullets-how-cloud-seeding-could-go-wrong/ https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/dodging-silver-bullets-how-c...
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Magical thinking and a waste of money. This has been proven it doesn't do much and doesn't scale. And not all action is progress, it's just motion. The issue that needs to be addressed is reducing atmospheric carbon by bio CCS. In the meantime, people in areas of drought either must pay for more expensive water from other areas or relocate because there is no practical and effective way to control the weather.
nuc1e0n 3y ago
At may seem obvious to me but maybe it's not to everyone. Clouds are white. i.e. They reflect the light from the sun back into space. Soil and rocks are generally not white, so absorb more heat. We should be trying to make more clouds rather than reducing them to rain.
- IsTom 3y ago
  They also reflect light reflected by ground back to ground and absorb infrared radiation.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

48 points by hhs 3y ago

FreshStart 3y ago

Question : can vortex cannons be used to create rain drop seeds?

LostLocalMan 3y ago

With all the talk about RHEL and centos/rocky/alma OS I was really confused by this title

redundantly 3y ago
Haha. NASA seeding the Rocky Linux project amid RHEL source code drought!
- dpflan 3y ago
  "RHEL", Is it pronounced something like "R-Hail"?
  - itscrush 3y ago
    I've always vocalized this as "Rail" for RHEL.

EA-3167 3y ago

It's been ages since I looked into cloud seeding, so maybe my knowledge is just incredibly out of date... but is there any high quality evidence that it works? I mean, to be clear, working at the scale required for agriculture. By the same token if it does work, doesn't this open a potentially brutal avenue for hydrological warfare/competition? Edit: Great responses, I learned a lot, thanks!

earthscienceman 3y ago
I'm an atmospheric scientist who has written/contributed to papers on cloud microphysics, albeit in the Arctic. I have not directly researched cloud seeding but do have the background to understand the dynamics at play. The answer is, at agricultural scales, absolutely not. What I think is interesting though is that your comment on "hydrological warfare/competition" is extremely relevant. Geo-engineering is almost always a hack with "no free lunch" impacts. For cloud seeding specifically, there is only ever so much water vapor available in the atmosphere and the efficacy of seeding depends on the dynamics/microphysics at play in the region of interest. If there is a lack of the specific aerosols necessary for condensation and precipitation, cloud seeding has shown to be effective to the tune of 5-15% increase in precip in certain regions. Water vapor doesn't like to hang out available in the atmosphere in large quantities so squeezing it out by forcing precipitation via "seeding" isn't really a reasonable concept. But to the degree that you do succeed, you are extracting water vapor that would have been transported by the atmosphere to other neighboring regions. While there is little evidence that cloud seeding can be done at-scale, in a world where someone comes up with a novel+clever idea this would mean that the impacts on precipitation in other regions would be significant. Again, no free lunch. It's not a stretch to imagine turning that into a competitive advantage or using it as a warfare tactic. If there were large bands of moisture just waiting to fall out of the sky we would be living in a very different climate. Aerosols are far too common on earth. In fact, the Arctic is one of the only places seeding makes a lot of sense with supercooled water and a distinct lack of aerosols in the clean environment. But in my research I have yet to come across much agriculture up there much less agrarian societies ;)
- crznp 3y ago
  If we imagine that excess water from Wyoming is used to grow crops in California, it seems reasonable to assume that it would be less moisture/precipitation for Nebraska. But if it is used to grow wheat in Colorado (because the obligations to lower-basin states need to be met regardless and the increased moisture allows more diversions across the continental divide), then it probably ends up evaporating anyway or else in the Platte River. It wouldn't be stealing moisture from Nebraska, they might actually benefit from it. Geo-engineering might not have a free lunch, but it also isn't a zero-sum game.

phkahler 3y ago

Those along the Colorado River complain if upstream takes out too much water. Now they want to steal water from the air that belongs to the Midwest? J.K. but still...

ortusdux 3y ago

Noaa has a great database of all permits issued for the last 50 years. > As part of Public Law 92-205 (1972), all non-Federal weather modification activities must be reported to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, via the NOAA Weather Program Office. Below is a list of these reports and is updated on a quarterly basis. https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Weather-Modification-Project-Reports https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Wea... This appears to be the permit for the activates in the article. (PDF): https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWAQ/Weather_Modification_Project/FY23/Q1/2022UTHU-1.pdf https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWA... While I was looking I found this permit, which is interesting: https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWAQ/Weather_Modification_Project/FY23/Q2/2023wmainitial.pdf https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWA... https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/09/make-sunsets-solar-geoengineering-climate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/0... https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/make-sunsets-monthly-so-high https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/make-sunsets-monthly-so-h... > "Iseman is the founder and CEO of Make Sunsets — a two-person firm that plans several more test flights this month. His start-up has triggered the worst fears of researchers who have struggled for decades to establish ground rules for solar geoengineering. The technology has almost always been seen as a last resort to counter runaway warming. Make Sunsets is not only promising to deploy this break-the-glass approach now — but to sell it for profit. Iseman, 39, acknowledges that he is, in many ways, a geoengineering novice. A former director of hardware for the start-up incubator Y Combinator, he got interested in the subject by reading Neal Stephenson’s novel “Termination Shock.”"

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ineedasername 3y ago

It seems like there are long term problems with this approach that will just cause bigger issues because seeding the clouds will either 1) Give you the water you were going to get anyway, only you get it a bit earlier, and assuming there are no other wider ripple effects of doing this (a huge assumption to make) then you're just going to wait even longer in between the seeded clouds and the next batch that weather patterns would serve up. So now you're even worse off when the seeded cloud water is used up and the interval to the next bit is extended [1] Or 2) You're taking water from clouds that would normally have dropped it elsewhere, which just shifts the problem by depriving some other region of the water it relies on. [1] Or 3) lots of other possibilities I'm not smart enough to think up because weather and climate systems are complicated and the laws around water rights are complicated and I have no domain expertise in either. Though I suppose that's the issue right there: If even I can see swiss cheese holes in the problems with this plan then it's bound to end poorly for someone. [1] I mean, I'm guessing there's only so much moisture in the air and that taking some out prematurely isn't likely to shift the overall system in a way that makes up for that gap. And even if it did it's still unlikely to preserve the system in a way that keeps the water flowing to where it would have gone without macroscopic human intervention.

RobotToaster 3y ago
>You're taking water from clouds that would normally have dropped it elsewhere, which just shifts the problem by depriving some other region of the water it relies on. The majority of rain falls over the ocean, so it may not be taking it from somewhere that needs more water.
- gameshot911 3y ago
  But taking water in the Rockies will have comparatively little effect on rainfall in the oceans vs immediate surrounding geographies.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  Sure, but in this case what they're taking is from clouds that are over land. I have a vague memory that western US weather patterns blow in from the pacific and drop it further east over the US, so an ocean drop may not be the destiny for this particular water. But I absolutely cannot assert this with any confidence without falling into the dunning-krueger hole. Although I do know just enough about water rights to know that doing this could get messy.

ngai_aku 3y ago

Anyone have a non-paywalled link? Tried piping it through wayback machine, but I still couldn’t get anything readable

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
https://archive.ph/kqewK https://archive.ph/kqewK
- ngai_aku 3y ago
  Thank you! Interestingly, I think that link was blocked at the DNS level when using Private Relay. Managed to get it open though.
k4rli 3y ago
How is such content even allowed here? It's not available due to GDPR and paywalls.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

https://archive.ph/kqewK https://archive.ph/kqewK

RamblingCTO 3y ago
I have SSL problems, but this also works: https://archive.is/kqewK https://archive.is/kqewK

cheekibreeki2 3y ago

I remember when cloud seeding was a conspiracy theory until the Chinese admitted doing it for the Olympics..

chefandy 3y ago
>> I remember when cloud seeding was a conspiracy theory until the Chinese admitted doing it for the Olympics.. For which Olympics? 1972? Here's an ABC nightly news feature story about cloud seeding, including a demo, from over a decade ago. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwonVY_cNS4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwonVY_cNS4
- discodave 3y ago
  Beijing Olympics was 2008, that's 15 years ago. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23397205 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23397205
  - chefandy 3y ago
    That's totally different. They were trying to stop it from raining. Read the history section of the cloud seeding Wikipedia article.
volleygman180 3y ago
“Chemtrails” still has a negative connotation as a conspiracy theory, despite the fact that cloud seeding is literally the same thing
8note 3y ago
What's the conspiracy exactly? Is it just a description of cloud seeding in Alberta? Cloud seeding in Alberta to reduce hail damage is well documented and well advertised

mistercheph 3y ago

No unforeseen and unintended environmentally catastrophic side-effects here folks!

NegativeLatency 3y ago

Is it really a drought if it lasts for 20 years? Sounds like previously unknown climate variability to me.

notfish 3y ago
One might even say that the long term weather patterns have shifted permanently. We should have a term for this, maybe something like climate change?
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Are we at a point where all weather events should be classified as climate change regardless of any proof or reason to do so? Some places are generally dryer than others and weather patterns aren’t restricted to small timescales just because that’d make things easier.
  - bayesianbot 3y ago
    There's a study[0] from 2022 that shows the western US megadrought was/is largely caused by human caused climate warming. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/us-west-megadrought-worst-1200-years-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/us-west-... (the first link in the article is the study, it's quite ugly so I used the article instead, but the study is worth reading)

firebirdn99 3y ago

Atmospheric science and chemistry is tough. Like others, I was always like why don't we have solutions to climate problems, it's the 21st century we have smartphones and all these cool apps! (lol) There should be a lot more private/public incentives or funding and leaders that push for more resources into this, so we make change kind of like SpaceX. Other questions I found out were difficult were if we can create clouds, and if we can create water, both artificially, and the resounding answer on the nets was NO, or we can but it is extremely dangerous, and not practical. But we must persist, and try again. edit: a cool article on history, and risks with cloud seeding -https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/dodging-silver-bullets-how-cloud-seeding-could-go-wrong/ https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/dodging-silver-bullets-how-c...

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Magical thinking and a waste of money. This has been proven it doesn't do much and doesn't scale. And not all action is progress, it's just motion. The issue that needs to be addressed is reducing atmospheric carbon by bio CCS. In the meantime, people in areas of drought either must pay for more expensive water from other areas or relocate because there is no practical and effective way to control the weather.

nuc1e0n 3y ago

At may seem obvious to me but maybe it's not to everyone. Clouds are white. i.e. They reflect the light from the sun back into space. Soil and rocks are generally not white, so absorb more heat. We should be trying to make more clouds rather than reducing them to rain.

IsTom 3y ago
They also reflect light reflected by ground back to ground and absorb infrared radiation.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]