Repurposing weather modification for cloud research

12 October 2024 | ZeroGeoengineering.com | Article published in September 2024 by Oxford University press titled, “Repurposing weather modification for cloud research showcased by ice crystal growth,” outlines the use of weather modification characterized as cloud research.

According to the report: “The seeding material was introduced into the cloud by a multirotor UAV (Meteodrone MM-670, Meteomatics AG), which has a propeller heating mechanism to enable flight in supercooled clouds with icing conditions. The UAV was equipped with one burn-in-place flare (55, 56), which contains a mixture of silver iodide, silver chloride, ammonium salt, and potassium salt (ZeusMK2, Cloud Seeding Technologies).”

Source

“A 94 GHz (W-band) frequency-modulated continuous wave Doppler cloud radar (FMCW-94-DP, RPG, (57)) and a 35 GHz (Ka-band) pulsed, polarimetric Doppler radar (Mira-36, Metek, (58)) were deployed at the observational site to measure the background cloud and seeding signatures.”

Funding
F.R., J.H., C.F., A.J.M., N.O., R.S., H.Z. and U.L. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement 101021272 CLOUDLAB). K.O. and P.S. were supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement 654109 and from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation) Project 408027490. ROD acknowledges EEARO-NO-2019-0423/IceSafari, contract no. 31/2020, and EU-HORIZON-WIDERA-2021 under grant number 101079385 for financial support.

Repurposing weather modification for cloud research showcased by ice crystal growth Sept 2024 Oxford University Press

The rebranding of “weather modification” to “weather research and forecasting” enables government agencies to engage in atmospheric experimentation without ethical or liability constraints.