Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) on Sunday questioned why scientists haven’t manipulated the climate to extinguish the wildfires over Southern California, insisting to her social media followers: “They know how to do it.”
The Georgia congresswoman, whose academic background is in enterprise administration, particularly cited a course of known as cloud seeding, which may stimulate preexisting clouds into producing rain, although at a small scale. She’s beforehand steered, with none supporting proof, that highly effective hurricanes are generated this fashion within the South to intentionally damage Republican-majority areas.
One of many points with cloud seeding as an answer in Southern California is that the area has been experiencing a extreme drought for weeks, leaving the air with low humidity and an absence of precipitation-producing clouds. Below such circumstances, there’s restricted to no alternative for such a way to work, as Heather Holmes defined in 2017 whereas an assistant professor in physics and atmospheric sciences on the College of Nevada, Reno.
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“When cloud seeding is used to prompt precipitation, or rain, the technique relies on already existing water molecules in the atmosphere to condense onto the particles, or ‘seeds,’” she wrote for the college’s information outlet, Nevada At this time. “Because moisture is the first ingredient for cloud seeding to produce rain, cloud seeding cannot be used as a solution to create rain during drought conditions.”
The North American Climate Modification Council equally advocates towards cloud seeding throughout drought, stating on-line that “cloud seeding opportunities during these periods would be very limited and the results likely marginal.”
In previous cases the place it was used to provide rain or snow ― in locations like China, Pakistan, Idaho and Colorado ― scientists would monitor incoming clouds by satellite tv for pc, analyze their content material and, if the circumstances had been supreme, shoot or launch silver iodide into the passing water vapor. This chemical causes water droplets within the clouds to freeze collectively and fall as rain.
The method isn’t easy or at all times profitable, and outcomes aren’t instantly substantial, as one meteorologist with the non-public firm Climate Modification Worldwide informed NBC Information in 2022.
“It’s one of the things that makes it so hard to evaluate, is you don’t see a doubling or tripling of the precipitation,” Bruce Boe, the corporate’s vice chairman of meteorology, informed the community whereas discussing the method’ use to create synthetic snow.
“You see an incremental increase, but you add that up over the course of a winter and then it can be significant,” he stated.
The Nationwide Middle for Atmospheric Analysis, which has examined cloud seeding to generate snowfall for water administration functions, has additionally pointed to wind circumstances needing to be good (Los Angeles is at the moment experiencing 45-70 mph wind gusts that authorities blame for serving to fan the flames). The analysis middle has additionally questioned how cost-effective cloud seeding is.
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“The seeding produces ice and that ice can form snow, but is it enough additional snow to make it cost effective?”Nationwide Middle for Atmospheric Analysis scientist Sarah Tessendorf stated in 2020 after the analysis institute’s testing in Idaho. “For water managers, the bottom line is the amount of snowpack that you’re building over the whole winter and how much runoff it will generate.”
