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Making Rain / Rainmaking / Rainmakers

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Aug 18, 2002
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Rainmaker turned off over health fears

A "miraculous" rain-making device was banned by Russian authorities over fears it was damaging residents' health.

Officials in Vladivostok called in Moscow firm Novokom-Tekhnoservice with no end in sight to a drought that has affected the area for months.

The company promised its £10,000 Atlant machine would end the drought by shooting negative ions into the atmosphere.

However, the local government ordered it to be switched off after two days when locals started complaining of tiredness and headaches.

It later emerged that the company had not provided technical documents to prove safety standards were being adhered to, Vladivostok News reported.

The machine, which had previously been dubbed a "miracle" by city officials, failed to produce any rain in the region.


Story filed: 10:48 Tuesday 21st October 2003

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_830869.html?menu=news.quirkies
 
However, the local government ordered it to be switched off after two days when locals started complaining of tiredness and headaches.

It later emerged that the company had not provided technical documents to prove safety standards were being adhered to, Vladivostok News reported.

Whoops, sounds like they're having problems with DOR!
 
A storm is brewing in China as drought-plagued regions accuse each other of stealing clouds for rain-seeding.

With the help of modern technology, scientists can fire rockets filled with various substances into light, fluffy clouds to make them rain.

"But the practice has caused considerable controversy in recent days, with some saying that one area's success with rain has meant taking moisture meant for one place and giving it to another," the China Daily said on Wednesday.

The row over rainclouds was particularly heated in several cities in central Henan province.

"Meteorological officials in Zhoukou were soon accusing their counterparts in Pingdingshan of overusing available natural resources by intercepting clouds that would have likely drifted to other places, say, like Zhoukou," the newspaper said.

Much of China is short of water and cloud-seeding is common, especially over major cities.
 
Light rain: Lasers could trigger downpours on demand
By Claire Bates
Last updated at 7:55 AM on 4th May 2010

People in drought-stricken countries could one day create rain clouds on demand thanks to laser technology.

Physicists have discovered that firing short laser bursts into the air can trigger the formation of water droplets. The breakthrough technique could help stimulate rainfall in the future.

Scientist Jerome Kasparian and his team from the University of Geneva wanted to find a more environmentally friendly alternative to cloud seeding. This 50-year-old process attempts to artificially induce showers.
Rockets carrying silver iodide particles are scattered in the sky. The particles act as 'condensation nuclei' around which water drops can form.
Dr Kasparian said cloud seeding is not an efficient method despite decades of development.
He added: 'There are also worries about how safe adding silver iodide particles into the air is for the environment.'

The researchers realised laser technology could be used to create an alternative technique.

They found firing an energy beam through an atmospheric cloud chamber created a channel of ionised nitrogen and oxygen molecules. These acted as condensation anchors in much the same way as silver iodide molecules.
The water drops along the damp channel nearly doubled in size from 50micrometres to 80 micrometres as they fused to the ions.

Next, Dr Kasparian's team tested the same technique in real-world conditions. They fired a high-powered 'Teramobile laser' into the skies above Berlin over a number of nights.
They found condensation droplets again formed along the path of the laser when humidity was high.

Laser physics expert Roland Sauerbrey, from the FZD Dresden-Rossendorf Research Centre in Germany, was impressed with the results.
'This is the first time that a laser has been used to cause condensation outdoors,' he told Nature.com.
The researchers next plan to investigate whether they can create condensation in a wider area by sweeping their laser across the sky.

While rain on demand could be several years away, Dr Kasparian said the technique could be adapted to help weathermen predict when a downpour is on its way.

The research appears in the latest edition of Nature Photonics.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0mxFyFBq5

There are probably other rain-making tales out there, some not so scientific!
 
I found this article on making rain by lasers today. Thinking this was a new idea, I came here to post it - and found the first story, over a year ago, was on the same topic! :shock:
(And it was posted by me - Doh! :roll: )


Firing laser beams into the sky could make it rain, say scientists
Water droplets have been created by shooting lasers into the air. The technique might be used to create or prevent rain
Ian Sample, science correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 August 2011 16.00 BST

Ever since ancient farmers called on the gods to send rain to save their harvests, humans have longed to have the weather at their command.
That dream has now received a boost after researchers used a powerful laser to produce water droplets in the air, a step that could ultimately help trigger rainfall.

While nothing can produce a downpour from dry air, the technique, called laser-assisted water condensation, might allow some control over where and when rain falls if the atmosphere is sufficiently humid.
Researchers demonstrated the technique in field tests after hauling a mobile laser laboratory the size of a small garage to the banks of the Rhône near lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Records from 133 hours of firings revealed that intense pulses of laser light created nitric acid particles in the air that behaved like atmospheric glue, binding water molecules together into droplets and preventing them from re-evaporating.
Within seconds, these grew into stable drops a few thousandths of a millimetre in diameter: too small to fall as rain, but large enough to encourage the scientists to press on with the work.

"We have not yet generated raindrops – they are too small and too light to fall as rain. To get rain, we will need particles a hundred times the size, so they are heavy enough to fall," said Jérôme Kasparian, a physicist at the University of Geneva. A report on the tests appears in the journal Nature Communications.

With improvements, shooting lasers into the sky could either help trigger or prevent showers. One possibility might be to create water droplets in air masses drifting towards mountains. The air would cool as it rose over these, causing the water droplets to grow and eventually fall.

An alternative might be to stave off an immediate downpour by creating so many tiny droplets in the air that none grew large enough to fall. "Maybe one day this could be a way to attenuate the monsoon or reduce flooding in certain areas," Kasparian said.

Efforts to bring the weather under control have become a matter of national pride in China, where the Beijing meterological bureau has an office devoted to weather modification. In 2009, the department claimed success after 18 jets and 432 explosive rockets laden with chemicals were sent into the skies to "seed" clouds. The chemicals, usually dry ice or silver iodide, provide a surface for water vapour to condense on, and supposedly trigger downpours from pregnant skies.

Kasparian believes laser-assisted rainmaking has advantages over blasting chemicals into the sky. "The laser can run continuously, you can aim it well, and you don't disperse huge amounts of silver iodide in the atmosphere," he said.
"You can also turn the laser on and off at will, which makes it easier to assess whether it has any effect. When the Chinese launch silver iodide into the sky, it is very hard to know whether it would have rained anyway," Kasparian added.

The team's Teramobile laser can shoot beams of light several kilometres into the sky, putting within easy reach the regions of the atmosphere where water vapour normally condenses into raindrops.
One modification the team is considering involves sweeping the laser across the sky to produce water droplets over a greater area. "From a technical point of view, sweeping the laser is not an issue. They do it in nightclubs all the time," Kasparian said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... phere-rain
 
This is an interesting tale of a grand experiment. Was it an experiment in science or pseudo-science? You decide!

When the U.S. Government Tried to Make It Rain by Exploding Dynamite in the Sky
The skies around Midland, Texas, lit up and thundered with the brilliance and cacophony of military-grade explosives. But it was far from a wartime scene, as on August 17, 1891, a group of scientists were setting off explosives in the first government-funded rain-making experiments.

Robert G. Dyrenforth had traveled by train from Washington, D.C. to a Texas cattle ranch in Texas with a group of other “rainmaking” enthusiasts. They arrived armed with dynamite, kites and balloons, the key ingredients for their rain-making recipe. Following the tenets of the concussion theory of weather modification, which suggested that clouds could be compelled to produce rain as a result of agitation from loud noise, the rainmakers prepared their explosives for detonation. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...e-nature+(Science+&+Nature+|+Smithsonian.com)
 
I happened to be reading Journey to the West recently.

From 1592:

Screenshot 2020-01-05 at 21.03.36.png
 

China is seeding clouds to replenish its shrinking Yangtze River


Chinese planes are firing rods into the sky to bring more rainfall to its crucial Yangtze River, which has dried up in parts, as swaths of the nation fall into drought and grapple with the worst heat wave on record.

Several regions on the Yangtze have launched weather modification programs, but with cloud cover too thin, operations in some drought-ravaged parts of the river's basin have remained on standby.

The Ministry of Water Resources said in a notice on Wednesday that drought throughout the Yangtze river basin was "adversely affecting drinking water security of rural people and livestock, and the growth of crops."

On Wednesday, central China's Hubei province became the latest to announce it would seed clouds, using silver iodide rods to induce rainfall.

The silver iodide rods -- which are typically the size of cigarettes -- are shot into existing clouds to help form ice crystals. The crystals then help the cloud produce more rain, making its moisture content heavier and more likely to be released.

Cloud seeding has been in practice since the 1940s and China has the biggest program in the world.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/17/asia/china-heat-drought-climate-yangtze-intl/index.html

maximus otter
 
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