Can We Control the Weather with Technology?

As the weather around the world reaches. new extremes the big challenge will be to try and mitigate the effects of climate change by changing the way we. create and use energy transport and food production but could there be other ways of using technology we already have. today to try and reduce for size and the, energy of some of a more localized. destructive weather events like, tornadoes and hurricanes and control rainfall . . , controlling the weather or weather, modification as it's known has long been, the goal of many from those wanting to, make things better for their fellow man to those looking to make it somewhat worse by weaponizing the weather and. it's not as if we haven't been trying one of the most well known methods of weather modification is cloud seeding. this is basically spraying tiny, particles of silver iodide dry ice or, frozen carbon dioxide liquid propane and more recently table salt into clouds by. planes rockets and flares although this method has been done for over 70 years. there's still a lot of debate as to how, effective it really is but in what was called the most scientific study of. cloud seeding carried out so far in Wyoming over a six-year period seeding. mounting clouds it was concluded that it produced about a 10% increase in precipitation but equally but different. areas and conditions around the world. could produce more or maybe have no, effect whatsoever there are two basic, methods the cold rain method and the warm rain method the cold rain method works in more temperate areas where. large convective clouds contain supercooled water the seeding agents like dry ice provide, a nuclei for the supercooled water to freeze around which then travel on the updrafts into the cloud picking up more water as they grow larger when they are. large enough they then fall and melt. into rain on the way down if the storm. is very large and has very strong updrafts they can become so large they. don't melt on the way down but fall as. hail the warm rain method is used in tropical areas where the clouds don't. reach for freezing point so a hydroscopic sea that's one which absorbs. water like salt is used instead the tiny. droplets coalesce as they also float up. and down on the downdraft again until, they are heavier to fall as rain, however if you use too much seed, material then it can have the. that effect by creating too many seeds. for the amount of water vapor available so very few of them can grow large enough to become raindrops and here we. have another underlying issue natural rain requires a seed to start the, process which would normally be a particle of dust or pollen but our use, of fossil fuels especially diesel and, coal also creates a lot of soot which, can also act as a seed so just driving your car or putting your heating on you could be unintentionally seeding the clouds this pollution has been blamed for the lack of the snowpack in recent, decades in areas like the western US. that rely upon clouds forming over mountains and the snow they deposit for. the meltwater for their water supplies. if the clouds are seeded by pollution, before they reach the mountains there. will be less snowfall and less water so. seeding the clouds over the mountains is. seen as a way of bringing back the snow and increasing the water supply. another experiment using ionized. particles he's been trialed in the Middle East in Abu Dhabi, the idea here is that the negatively, charged particles are released from ion emitters and float upwards on the. convection currents and attach, themselves to the natural condensation nuclei in the clouds once charged they, would attract other nuclei and grow more. quickly and hopefully survive longer to, produce more rain than he would have. done without being charged so far they say the results have been positive but more research is required a common, misconception is that cloud seeding can, create rain or snow at will and anywhere, and from clear skies this is false it. can only affect clouds which are already existing and our rain or snow bearing or. at just the point of becoming so if, there are no clouds or there are clouds which cannot produce rain such as the very high cirrus clouds then no amount of seeding will make any difference it's also been found that clouds that form. over the sea are more likely to respond. to seeding than those that form inland, hail suppression is another reason why. seeding of large thunderstorms is done in parts of a world where hailstones routinely grow to very large sizes and cause damage to crops vehicles building, and people although the exact details of. how hailstones in these storms grow are. still sketchy the idea is that seeding. them will cause more of a supercooled. water to fall as rain earlier and reduce the amount that is available for. hailstones to form and thus reduce their, size in fact it's been found that the tips of propellers of aircraft and also, the airflow of their wings can produce. ice particles from the clouds water. vapor under certain conditions and. unintentionally see clouds which could. be wrongly attributed to seeding itself, but this hasn't stopped many countries, around the world from trying it China. has invested heavily in cloud seeding, and even used it to try and keep the opening and closing ceremonies of the, 2008 Beijing Olympics rain and smog free whilst China says that they have had great success it also has some of the, most polluted skies in the world, further confusing the results it's been, reported that they are deployed over 500

solid fuel burners on the high slopes of the Tibetan Plateau to pump out silver. iodide in an experiment to try and. increase the amount of snow and rain, across a 1.6 million square kilometer, area but eventually feeds into the yellow Yangtze and Mekong rivers in, Boeing the West silver iodized in increasingly scenes of pollutant and, therefore not used as much but as they say one man's pitchfork is another man's, weapon of war and so it was with cloud, seeding in the Vietnam War when the US, carried out the secret CIA sponsored operation Popeye from 1967 to 72 under, the auspices of weather reconnaissance this was an attempt to Turin increase, the length of a monsoon season with. cloud seeding with the intention of causing damage due to extra rainfall to. roads river crossings inducing, landslides and generally making life more difficult. with year-round mud for the Viet Cong. along the Ho Chi Minh Trail the main. route for transporting men and arms to, the south but which also covered parts. of Cambodia allows as well as Vietnam, only after the program's existence was. leaked in 1971 did operations cease in. 1972 after details of it were published. in the New York Times this highlights. the issue that the effects of increased. rainfall don't stay in the area where the seeding took place or the rain fell. flash floods along river courses could happen far from the rainfall and even in other countries so if we can affect the, rainfall beam we should be able to. affect storms and the biggest of all tropical cyclones or hurricanes project. Cirrus was a collaboration between the US Army Corps and General Electric to. drop crushed dry ice or frozen carbon dioxide from a modified bomber into rain bands of a hurricane in 1947 and this is, actually the basis of all modern cloud seeding the theory was that the dry ice. would cause a new eye wall to form which would be larger than the old one this. would reduce four pressure gradient and weaken the hurricane after receiving the. storm did a quick turn and made landfall near Savannah Georgia people blamed for. change of direction on the seeding and. legal action for damage caused was threatened which stopped further trials. for over ten years later it was, discovered that a similar storm had done, the same thing in 1906 and that the 1947 storm was probably already starting to, turn before the seeding started and this. stopped for legal action project Stormfury was a further attempt to weaken hurricanes by the US government, from 1962 to 63 again misused plowed seeding this time with silver iodide which mimics the effects of dry ice. whilst been easier to handle and longer lasting this was supposed to try and. make the supercooled water in the Hurricanes freeze and disrupt its inner, structure however it was found that most, hurricanes don't have enough supercooled, water and that the uncie. hurricanes changed in the same way as a, seeded one was expected to pretty much making the project redundant by the late, 1950s nuking hurricanes into submission, was seriously considered the idea was but if you exploded a high-yield weapon. above the eye. the huge uplift of air seen in the, fireball would suck in cool air below. and disrupt the storms convection. currents but there are some serious. drawbacks to this the most obvious beam but would have spread highly radioactive, isotopes through the wind and rain and over a wide area the second issue is for. hurricanes are heat engines they get. their energy from the warm moist air above the ocean so adding more heat from. the blast will probably make it stronger, rather than weaker and the third problem. is the sheer amount of energy already. being released by a hurricane which in a typical one is equivalent to a 10 Megaton weapon being detonated every 20 minutes so a succession of high-yield. bombs will be needed to have a required. effect as hurricanes are just air and, water vapor the blast shock wave would, have little effect on its structure of. what water vapor might be superheated from the initial x-ray burst would soon, convince back again in a short time. after adding more heating process so if. you can't stop them when they're large, maybe you could stall them when they are, developing and just storms at sea for a. hurricane to develop the sea temperature. must be above twenty six point five, degrees Celsius around 80 tropical. depressions form in an average year in. the Atlantic Basin but only around five, to ten also become hurricanes so which ones do you go for instead of trying to. figure out which ones might become a hurricane why not affect them all there have been, several ideas to cool the ocean surface in the area where they develop using wave powered pumps also known as ocean. plowing to even move warm surface water, downwards or cool deep water upwards the, issue here is that you would need, thousands of these, covering a vast area and in small-scale. tests many of these pumps were damaged by the waves another idea which is already being used in Norway to stop the build-up of icy fjords is to pump air, into the deep water as the air bubbles rise to the surface they bring up the, deeper salty water which stops the ice. from forming if this was done in the warm ocean waters it could bring up the deeper cooler water to cool the surface, and deprive the storms of the heat, energy to grow into hurricanes again the. same issue applies in that you would need thousands of these solar-powered, pumping plants covering a large area to. have any effect and yet another idea is. to make the clouds themselves more. reflective by spraying seawater into, them this would reflect more of the. sun's energy back into space and cooling,

the sea below this has been suggested to. help combat global warming and if this. was done around the equator they not only would it reduce the amount of, available energy for storms to form but it would also help cool the poles as the whole point of the atmospheric and ocean, currents is to distribute the heat imbalance from the equator to the poles, however there is also the law of unintended consequences on sea life and any new weather patterns that may become. established if we were to artificially cool large areas of the oceans tornadoes, are the other deadly storms but these, are quite different from hurricanes for. one they are much smaller with an average width of just naught point 8. kilometres and give very little notice. of when they form the funnel clouds, lasting from a few minutes to a couple. of hours but in that time they can do, tremendous amounts of damage to anything, they encounter unlike hurricanes tornadoes nearly always form overland from large rotating. thunderstorms or supercells these. require cold dry air over warm humid air. and an unstable atmosphere something. which happens regularly over the Great, Plains of the central us in an area called tornado alley because they form in a different way to hurricanes, primarily due to the difference between, the cool dry air and the warm moist air masses and the lateral winds which, provide the spin to get them going, there have been several theories as how. they could be controlled one was from, the physicist Bernard Eastlund. who if you've seen our video on HAARP, was the man behind the idea of the giant, iron aspheric heater in Alaska that was, supposed to be able to heat the. ionosphere to create a lens to focus for, sun's energy onto an area maybe hundreds. of kilometers away well the thunderstorms solar power, satellite which accorded would be a giant solar collector who will generate electricity and convert it into microwaves which would then be focused onto thunderstorms to heat the cool, rainy down drafts disrupting the, convection currents within the storm cell this might sound far-fetched but if, you watched our previous video about, space-based electrical power generation, then you'll know that they're already. trialing microwave power link technology. and the satellite based solar power, generators so it might not be that far. fetched for long but there are problems with this idea - firstly the solar power. station and microwave transmitter would, need to be in geostationary orbit to stay above the area and to have a. 24-hour supply of sunlight for its power but that would place them over the equator rather than the central us at 36,000 kilometers away the beam would, also be very wide at up to ten, kilometers across and not focused enough to pick out the small area of the cool air in the rear flank downdraft of. thunderstorms where most tornadoes start, if you heat up the surrounding air more we've already warm air it might just, make any existing tornadoes even stronger if a satellite was in low-earth orbit of 400 kilometers then the beam, could be a lot tighter and stronger but. it will be traveling around the earth. once every 90 minutes or so with only a, few minutes over a potential target getting their satellite to be over a, storm at the right time and in daylight, for it, we'll be down to luck rather than. planning you would also have to avoid the high energy being from hitting. people and livestock on the ground so, it'd have to be turned off when over, towns and villages a variation on this, is a ground-based system with high-power microwave transmitters mounted on trucks. with large generators this gets around a problem of being close enough but you, would still need many megawatts so a, convoy of transmitters and generators, would have to track down the storms like. storm chasers do now they would then, need to stop and set up with just a few. minutes to be effective also while trying to avoid any emerging. tornadoes in the real world this would, just not be practical with current power technology and transportation so our best hope is for better detection and, prediction of where the tornadoes may. form and maybe more underground, buildings and structures that would not be affected accurate weather prediction. has come a long way in the last 20 years or so using a whole variety of methods. from real-time updating of data in the. field to predictive modeling on, supercomputers but all of this requires. skills in ways of thinking like a, scientist brilliant the sponsors for, this video is a problem solving website that can help you develop these skills, by breaking down problems into small, easily understandable parts then putting. them back together to show you the overall solution you can download any of their dozens of interactive courses, through the mobile app and you'll be. able to solve fascinating problems in math science and computer science no, matter where you are or how spotty your internet connection may be what's great. about these courses is that they're all, totally interactive you will experiment. with pendulum clocks to master the, physics of motion use rockets to model, algebraic functions and learn probability by playing casino blackjack I particularly like the course about. quantum computing so if you want to, support curious droid and get unlimited. access to all brilliance in-depth math and science. courses you can head on over to, brilliant org for slash curious droid to, get 20% offer their annual premium subscription you.