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Cloud Seeding
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If the air is saturated with moisture of course that will start to fall but I'm wondering if cloud seeding could be done just with fine dust like loess.
We're hearing that the Arabian Gulf states cloud seed and this may have worsened recent downpours which caused flooding.
Mod
https://phys.org/news/2024-06-marine-...
"One proposed solution is geoengineering to reduce the amount of heat that makes its way into the atmosphere. One such approach is called marine cloud brightening (MCB), which involves injecting massive amounts of sea salt into the lower atmosphere to serve as tiny mirrors, bouncing heat and light from the sun back out into space.
For this new study, the researchers investigated how this might work for one part of the world and to model the potential impacts.
The work involved configuring established climate models to show what would happen if artificial stratocumulus clouds were created under two different scenarios, both over the North Pacific: one over the temperate latitudes and the other over sub-tropical waters. Under both scenarios, the artificial clouds were generated and maintained for nine months every year for 30 years.
The researchers found that the artificial clouds would reduce temperatures in the western U.S., primarily California—reducing risk of dangerously high temperatures by as much as 55%. But they also found the same clouds would reduce rainfall amounts, both in the U.S. and other parts of the world."
More information: Jessica S. Wan et al, Diminished efficacy of regional marine cloud brightening in a warmer world, Nature Climate Change (2024).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4155...
Journal information: Nature Climate Change
The issue of cloud seeding while rooted in real science has not been shown to be able to predictably create measurable rainfall on demand. It does rain in areas using it on occasion and is used by various countries on a regular basis.
Cloud seeding can also break up clouds by making it rain now instead of later which is supposed to lessen the possibility of flood activity. Arid regions in the Mid East, Asia, and Africa are using it for promoting agriculture as well as helping to fill reservoirs. Some countries have used cloud seeding to keep the skies clear for important events.
Cloud seeding can also disperse fog by making it condense into liquid moisture which falls to the ground.
Cloud seeding is also used to break up hail storms by preventing the formation of hail.
Cloud seeding is now being considered as a way of making clouds more reflective so sunlight is reflected back into the sky and doesn't reach Earth's surface. This would lower the temperature, and if done globally might lower the Earth's average temperature. This is being tested right now in San Francisco using table salt.
Cloud seeding receives little publicity globally but locally where it is practiced the discussions range from positive to negative. It's said that it doesn't do anything, to it does. That the chemicals will cause pollution or they won't. Its okay to tamper with the Natural World using artificial means to change it, to it isn't okay, with reasons ranging from science based, to personal feelings, to beliefs held by indigenous people.
The usual chemical is silver iodide because it mimics the formation of ice crystals which then have water moisture condense on them. Other substances can be used, including dry ice, and table salt, which is used in warm areas because salt absorbs moisture and thus facilitates the creation of water droplets. Propane and liquid nitrogen can also be used as cloud seeding mechanisms.
A new method of cloud seeding is using ions to seed the clouds. This could prevent chemical pollution happening when large quantities of chemicals are used in the same areas over and over again.
It is estimated that cloud seeding might contribute 1.5 to perhaps 3 percent of snow pack cover on mountains.
Cloud seeding was used in the Viet Nam War to increase seasonal rains and it supposedly extended the rain season by an extra month. The only way for this to have worked work would have been for an extremely large amount of chemicals used for extended periods of time which certainly polluted the ground during the seeding process.
The amount of money spent on cloud seeding has been increasing steadily and will probably be double in 2030 compared to today.
The cloud seeding experiments happening now in San Francisco were not hidden, neither were they given a lot of publicity to minimize negative responses. The San Francisco tests are using table salt, a cheap alternative to silver iodide. They are not testing the ion process which seems to be far less polluting especially if it was ramped up to global use to provide extra cloud cover to minimize global warming.
https://www.vynzresearch.com/aerospac...
https://source.colostate.edu/cloud-se...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...