Could Cloud Seeding be used to Counteract the Effects of Global Warming?

So recently, Karnataka, a state in South India, started cloud seeding in order to induce rainfall because of low rainfall in recent months. Cloud seeding has been tried in several Indian states, with mixed results. Last year, China spent $30 million in cloud seeding research.

How Cloud Seeding Works

So basically, the way rainfall works, is that the moisture in clouds condenses into ice,becomes very heavy and falls down. On the way, it melts into the water drops that we all know of. But the crucial thing is, moisture doesn't just randomly coalesce into ice crystals. It needs some other material to latch on to, in order to form a single, unified structure. This, is called a cloud condensation nuclei.

Materials like dust, soot,clay,black carbon from fires, or even sea salt, generally become CCNs during naturally occurring rainfall. These are the materials that the moisture latches on to, and condenses into ice crystals.

In cloud seeding, you release particles that can act as a CCN into the air.This increases the concentration of ice crystals, leading to more rainfall. Silver Iodide, Dry Ice, and liquid propane are some particles used in cloud seeding.

But all this is theory that has never been known to actually work. While people have tried many times, there is no statistical evidence of cloud seeding actually increasing rainfall. The main question that is difficult to answer is: "Would it have rained anyway if we hadn't done cloud seeding?"

But a lot of countries are pouring a lot of money into making this work, and many other methods of inducing rainfall, and in general, weather modification.

How it could be used to "dampen" the Effects of Global Warming

A lot of people think global warming is going to make storms stronger, and make it rain all the time. Other people think it's going to turn the planet into a barren wasteland that has no rainfall.

They are both partially right.

What's actually happening, is that the weather is becoming more extreme. So in places where there are dry spells, the dry spells are becoming more prolonged,more severe. In places that have storms, and heavy rainfall, the storms are becoming stronger, and the amount of rainfall is increasing. Basically, a shit ton of rain falls in a few days, and the rest of the week there's practically zero rain.

So if we could induce rainfall in areas that receive very little rain using a technique like cloud seeding, we could lessen that extreme weather. Basically, we make rainfall more consistent across geographies.

The other part of this, is reducing the intensity of storms, and reducing heavy rainfall. This can be done by a different set of emerging technologies, like cooling the surface of the oceans using huge tubes that pump warm waters down into the deeper, cooler areas of the sea.

Both these could come together to "dampen" the effect of global warming, and make the weather more hospitable for humanity. If these things work, they would be breakthrough technologies, and probably would lead to the creation of entire industries related to weather management.

So are you ready to laugh at the valuation of that weather management startup that actually has tech that works, but has no plan to become profitable?(Actually, functional weather management is the one thing that people would be willing to sell their kidneys for.So I don't think they'll have a lot of problems with profitability, Lol)

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harshallele

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Sources

• Header image from Pixabay.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

• https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/8/16264376/stopping-a-hurricane-science

• http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/cloud-seeding-better-on-the-fifth-day/article19640722.ece

• http://www.businessinsider.in/China-just-set-aside-30-million-for-a-controversial-project-designed-to-make-it-rain-by-shooting-clouds-with-special-bullets-and-its-not-the-only-one/articleshow/53458579.cms