Pacific Standard February 27, 2017

Despite use by at least 52 countries around the world, both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Meteorological Society doubt cloud-seeding technology’s effectiveness.

The Cessna 210 aircraft, with cloud seeding equipment. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier this month, Jordan, the second most water-poor country in the world, ordered more rainfall through cloud-seeding to help alleviate water shortages. Jordan’s cloud-seeding experiment followed after Russia, which last year ordered the rain to fall earlier in order to guarantee a dry day for parades and celebrations. Around the same time as Russia was manipulating its weather, California’s Tahoe Basin, desperate for extra snow for the coming ski season, ordered, well, more snow.

Cloud-seeding geoengineering, in use for more than 75 years to produce rain and snow, is a technological approach to manipulate the weather and climate. In the process of cloud-seeding or weather modification, silver iodide, potassium iodide, or solid carbon dioxide is shot into clouds by rockets, sprayed into clouds by drones or aircraft, or burned in generators atop mountains. Once inside the cloud, the chemicals freeze to create ice crystals, which turn to rain or snow that falls to the ground.

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