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Weather modification

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A tornado in central Oklahoma. Weather control researchers aspire to eliminate or control dangerous types of weather such as this.

Weather control is the act of manipulating or altering certain aspects of the environment to produce desirable changes in weather.

Feasibility

Most weather phenomena are fed by massive amounts of solar energy (collected by the earth's surface and atmosphere) and take place in very large volumes of air. Direct manipulation of the weather by humans is in most cases not feasible, simply due to the huge amount of energy that would be required. It is generally quite feasible to control "weather" on much smaller scales. Indoor systems that modify temperature, humidity, and particulate counts are known as climate control.

Some human activities are known to have an effect on the weather outdoors, because they cause physical changes to wide areas, changing the shape of natural flows of energy and material. Large-scale, long time-period effects are generally known as climate change. For example, global economic activity producing carbon dioxide and other gases has been found to contribute to global warming, while the emission of particulate matter tends to have a cooling effect (and for example lead to historical concerns about global cooling).

Unsustainable farming techniques contribute to desertification in many areas around the world, and historical events such as the Dust Bowl in the United States. Deforestation can also affect the local water cycle. The release of large amounts of soot or dust particles into the atmosphere causes cooler surface temperatures. Locally, this is believed to have occurred near oil fires in Kuwait after the Gulf War, and that a catastrophic global cooling would occur due to atmospheric pollution after a major nuclear war - see nuclear winter.

It is also sometimes possible to influence weather-related events where only a slight change is needed to change the outcome. For example, citrus farmers often try to prevent frost damage to their crops by packing them in insulating plant material, by spraying them with water, or by using a Selective Inverted Sink. Only a small difference in surface temperature is needed to prevent frost, if the feared cold snap is relatively mild.

History of weather control

Witches concoct a brew to summon a hailstorm.

Some American Indians had rituals which they believed could induce rain. The Finnish people, on the other hand, were believed by others to be able to control weather. As a result, Vikings refused to take Finns on their oceangoing raids. Remnants of this superstition lasted into the twentieth century, with some ship crews being reluctant to accept Finnish sailors. The early modern era saw people observe that during battles the firing of cannons and other firearms often initiated precipitation.

Magical and religious practices to control the weather are attested in a variety of cultures. In Greek mythology, Iphigenia was sacrificed as a human sacrifice to appease the wrath of the goddess Artemis, who had caused the Achaean fleet to be becalmed at Aulis at the beginning of the Trojan War. In Homer's Odyssey, Aeolus, keeper of the winds, bestowed Odysseus and his crew with a gift of the four winds in a bag. However, the sailors open the bag while Odysseus slept, looking for booty, and as a result are blown off course by the resulting gale.[1] In ancient Rome, the lapis manalis was a sacred stone kept outside the walls of Rome in a temple of Mars. When Rome suffered from drought, the stone was dragged into the city.[2]

The Berwick witches of Scotland were found guilty of using black magic to summon storms to murder King James VI of Scotland by seeking to sink the ship upon which he travelled.[3] Scandinavian witches allegedly claimed to sell the wind in bags or magically confined into wooden staves; they sold the bags to seamen who could release them when becalmed.[4] In various towns of Navarre, prayers petitioned Saint Peter to grant rain in time of drought. If the rain was not forthcoming, the statue of St Peter was removed from the church and tossed into a river.[5]

Perhaps the first example of practical weather control is the lightning rod. In the 1950s, computer scientist John von Neumann, an early theorizer on weather control, surmised that if Earth were to enter another Ice Age, a preventative solution would be to dump dirt (or spray soot from cropdusting planes) on the surface of the planet's glaciers. He noted that this would significantly change their reflectivity (albedo), and thus increase the solar energy retained by the planet. Such a strategy would require repeated applications, as storms would cover some portion of the soot with new snow until their frequency and range abated. The theoretical efficacy of von Neumann's proposal remains to be examined. Wilhelm Reich performed cloudbusting experiments in the 1950s to 1960s, the results of which are controversial.

Cloud seeding for rain

Cloud seeding is a common technique intended to trigger rain, but evidence on its effectiveness is mixed. Critics generally contend that claimed successes occur in conditions which were going to rain anyway. It is used in several different countries, including the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Russia. In the People's Republic of China there is actually a perceived dependency upon it in dry regions, which believe they are actually increasing annual rainfall by firing silver iodide rockets into the sky where rain is desired. In the United States, dry ice or silver iodide may be injected into a cloud by aircraft, or even from the ground, in an attempt to increase rainfall; there are even companies dedicated to this form of weather modification.

Storm prevention

Project Stormfury was an attempt to weaken tropical cyclones by flying aircraft into storms and seeding the eyewall with silver iodide. The project was run by the United States Government from 1962 to 1983. A similar project using soot was run in 1958, with inconclusive results.[6] Various methods have been proposed to reduce the harmful effects of hurricanes. Moshe Alamaro of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology[7] proposed using barges with upward-pointing jet engines to trigger smaller storms to disrupt the progress of an incoming hurricane; critics doubt the jets would be powerful enough to make any noticeable difference.[6]

Alexandre Chorin of the University of California at Berkeley proposed dropping large amounts of environmentally friendly oils on the sea surface to prevent droplet formation.[8] Experiments by Kerry Emanuel[9] of MIT in 2002 suggested that hurricane-force winds would disrupt the oil slick, making it ineffective.[10] Other scientists disputed the factual basis of the theoretical mechanism assumed by this approach.[11] The Florida company Dyn-O-Mat proposes the use of a product it has developed, called Dyn-O-Gel, to reduce the strength of hurricanes. The substance is a powder which reportedly has the ability to absorb 1,500 times its own weight in water. The theory is that it is dropped into clouds to remove their moisture. When the gel reaches the ocean surface, it is reportedly dissolved. The company has tested the substance on a thunderstorm, but there has not been any scientific consensus established as to its effectiveness.[12] Hail cannons are used by some farmers in an attempt to ward off hail, but there is no reliable scientific evidence to confirm or deny their effectiveness. Another new anti-hurricane technology [1] is a method for the reduction of tropical cyclones’ destructive force - pumping sea water and diffused in the wind at the bottom of such tropical cyclone in its eyewall.

Ionospheric experiments

HIPAS has several diverse experimental facilities: a 1-megawatt rf transmitter to produce ELF/VLF (Extremely Low Frequency and Very Low Frequency) electromagnetic (EM) generation by the absorption of radio frequency (rf) power in the arctic ionosphere including ion cyclotron excitation; a 100 kW rf plasma torch used in research on the destruction of hazardous waste; a 2.7 m liquid mirror telescope used with one of several lasers for ionospheric stimulation and measurement; an Incoherent Scatter Radar (a new project using 88 ft. diameter antenna at NOAA Gilmore Creek site 34 km SW of HIPAS as the receiving antenna with the transmitter at HIPAS). HIPAS is in the process of adding a very high power (terawatt) laser (recently obtained from LLNL) to perform laser breakdown experiments in the ionosphere. Two Diesel electric generators (1500 HP 4160 V, 3-phase, 1.2 MVA each) are used to power the experiments. There are a number of computers (PC's ) on site, and a high-speed data line to UAF is available. While these experiments are useful in measuring the properties of the ionosphere, they produce insufficient amounts of energy to modify it in any significant way.

Weather control and law

Weather control, as well as "weather tampering", are expressly forbidden dating from at least December 10, 1976, when the "United Nations General Assembly Resolution 31/72, TIAS 9614 Convention[13] on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques" was adopted. The Convention was: Signed in Geneva May 18, 1977; Entered into force October 5, 1978; Ratification by U.S. President December 13, 1979; U.S. ratification deposited at New York January 17, 1980. U.S. Senate Bill 517[14] and U.S. House Bill 2995[15] were two laws proposed in 2005 that would have allowed experimental weather modification by artificial methods, established a Weather Modification Operations and Research Board, and implemented a national weather modification policy. Neither ever became law.

Future aspirations

Climatologist Ross Hoffman has simulated hurricane control based on selective heating and cooling (or prevention of evaporation).[16] Futurist John Smart has discussed the potential for weather control via space-based solar power networks. One proposal involves the gentle heating via microwave of portions of large hurricanes. Such chaotic systems may be susceptible to "side steering" with a few degrees of increased temperature/pressure at critical points. A sufficient network might keep the largest and most potentially damaging hurricanes from landfall, at the request of host nations. Blizzards, monsoons, and other extreme weather are also potential candidates for space-based amelioration.[citation needed] If large-scale weather control were to become feasible, potential risks include:

  • Unintended side effects, especially given the chaotic nature of weather development
  • Damage to existing ecosystems
  • Health risks to humans
  • Equipment malfunction or accidents
  • Non-democratic control or use as a weapon
Main article: Weather control in popular culture

In popular culture, weather control technology can be encountered in the realms of public speculation, science fiction, and fantasy. The concept of weather control is often portrayed as a part of terraforming.

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theorists have suggested that certain governments use or seek to use weather control as a weapon (eg via HAARP and/or chemtrails), but such allegations have not been proven. At a counterterrorism conference in 1997, United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen referred to the writings of futurist Alvin Toffler, specifically regarding concerns about "eco-terrorism" and intentionally caused natural disasters.[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ Homer, The Odyssey, book 10.
  2. ^ Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, ch. 5 (abridged edition), "The Magical Control of Rain"
  3. ^ Smout, T. C. A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830, pp 184 - 192
  4. ^ Adam of Bremen and Ole Worm are quoted as maintaining this in Grillot de Givry's Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy (Frederick Publications, 1954).
  5. ^ Frazer, supra.
  6. ^ a b http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn7995.html - Alamaro proposal and energy critique
  7. ^ http://alamaro.home.comcast.net/Alamaro-bio.htm
  8. ^ http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7726 - Chorin proposal
  9. ^ http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/home.html
  10. ^ http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn7995.html
  11. ^ http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7726
  12. ^ Anti-hurricane invention worth pursuing. Murdock, Deroy. Scripps Howard News Service. 22 Oct 2005.
  13. ^ http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/enmod/text/environ2.htm
  14. ^ http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109-517
  15. ^ http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-2995
  16. ^ Hoffman, R, "Controlling Hurricanes," Scientific American, Oct 2004.
  17. ^ http://www.fas.org/news/usa/1997/04/bmd970429d.htm

External articles and further reading

General information

  • Article Montana restricts spraying to a window of months and requires materials and employee lists
  • US Navy Some work is done by The United States Navy using ELF: Simulations of ELF radiation generated by heating the high-latitude D- region. (This work is supported by the Office of Naval Research and, in part, by a grant of HPC time from the DoD High Performance Computing Center at the Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground)

Patents

  • Original
  • Process for weather control, H. M. Brandau, U.S. patent 2,756,097
  • Weather control by artifical means, Heinz W. Kasemir, U.S. patent 3,284,005
  • Cloud formation and subsequent moisture precipitation, U.S. patent 3,409,220
  • System and method for irradiation of planet surface areas, Aurthur G. Buckingham, U.S. patent 3,564,253
  • Weather modification method, Knollenberg, U.S. patent 3,613,992
  • Combustible compositions for generating aerosols, particularly suitable for cloud modification and weather control and aerosolization process, Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche, U.S. patent 3,630,950
  • Method and apparatus for altering a region in the earth's atmosphere, ionosphere, and/or magnetosphere, J. Eastlund, U.S. patent 4,686,605
  • Method and composition for precipitation of atmospheric water, Slavko Mentus, U.S. patent 5,360,162
  • Use of artificial satellites in earth orbits adaptively to modify the effect that solar radiation would otherwise have on earth's weather, Franklin Y. K. Chen, U.S. patent 5,762,298
  • Weather modification by artificial satellites, Franklin Y. K. Chen, U.S. patent 5,984,239
  • Reissue
  • Combustible compositions for generating aerosols, particularly suitable for cloud modification and weather control and aerosolization process, Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche, U.S. patent RE29142
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