[HN Gopher] Cloud seeding catching on amid Rocky Mountain drought
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Cloud seeding catching on amid Rocky Mountain drought
Author : hhs
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-06-21 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hjnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hjnews.com)
| ortusdux wrote:
| Noaa has a great database of all permits issued for the last 50
| years.
|
| > As part of Public Law 92-205 (1972), all non-Federal weather
| modification activities must be reported to the U.S. Secretary of
| Commerce, via the NOAA Weather Program Office. Below is a list of
| these reports and is updated on a quarterly basis.
|
| https://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Collections/Wea...
|
| This appears to be the permit for the activates in the article.
| (PDF):
| https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWA...
|
| While I was looking I found this permit, which is interesting:
|
| https://library.oarcloud.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/OAR/OWA...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/0...
|
| https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/make-sunsets-monthly-so-h...
|
| > _" Iseman is the founder and CEO of Make Sunsets -- a two-
| person firm that plans several more test flights this month. His
| start-up has triggered the worst fears of researchers who have
| struggled for decades to establish ground rules for solar
| geoengineering. The technology has almost always been seen as a
| last resort to counter runaway warming. Make Sunsets is not only
| promising to deploy this break-the-glass approach now -- but to
| sell it for profit.
|
| Iseman, 39, acknowledges that he is, in many ways, a
| geoengineering novice. A former director of hardware for the
| start-up incubator Y Combinator, he got interested in the subject
| by reading Neal Stephenson's novel "Termination Shock.""_
| mistercheph wrote:
| No unforeseen and unintended environmentally catastrophic side-
| effects here folks!
| ngai_aku wrote:
| Anyone have a non-paywalled link? Tried piping it through wayback
| machine, but I still couldn't get anything readable
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| https://archive.ph/kqewK
| ngai_aku wrote:
| Thank you! Interestingly, I think that link was blocked at
| the DNS level when using Private Relay. Managed to get it
| open though.
| k4rli wrote:
| How is such content even allowed here? It's not available due
| to GDPR and paywalls.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Is it really a drought if it lasts for 20 years? Sounds like
| previously unknown climate variability to me.
| notfish wrote:
| One might even say that the long term weather patterns have
| shifted permanently. We should have a term for this, maybe
| something like climate change?
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| https://archive.ph/kqewK
| phkahler wrote:
| Those along the Colorado River complain if upstream takes out too
| much water. Now they want to steal water from the air that
| belongs to the Midwest?
|
| J.K. but still...
| LostLocalMan wrote:
| With all the talk about RHEL and centos/rocky/alma OS I was
| really confused by this title
| redundantly wrote:
| Haha. NASA seeding the Rocky Linux project amid RHEL source
| code drought!
| dpflan wrote:
| "RHEL", Is it pronounced something like "R-Hail"?
| [deleted]
| EA-3167 wrote:
| It's been ages since I looked into cloud seeding, so maybe my
| knowledge is just incredibly out of date... but is there any high
| quality evidence that it works? I mean, to be clear, working at
| the scale required for agriculture. By the same token if it does
| work, doesn't this open a potentially brutal avenue for
| hydrological warfare/competition?
|
| Edit: Great responses, I learned a lot, thanks!
| gnabgib wrote:
| Yep, in 2017[0]. Suppose it depends on what you mean by works..
| can we cause precipitation (yes - [0]) or change precipitation
| (yes - [1] regularly done to decrease hail magnitude).
|
| [0]: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/feb-29-coronavirus-
| containme... [1]: https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-
| resources/stem-in-con...
| rdiddly wrote:
| shall adds. as I said I will 8dag6isws2,aa.a..a.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| I'm an atmospheric scientist who has written/contributed to
| papers on cloud microphysics, albeit in the Arctic. I have not
| directly researched cloud seeding but do have the background to
| understand the dynamics at play.
|
| The answer is, at agricultural scales, absolutely not. What I
| think is interesting though is that your comment on
| "hydrological warfare/competition" is extremely relevant. Geo-
| engineering is almost always a hack with "no free lunch"
| impacts. For cloud seeding specifically, there is only ever so
| much water vapor available in the atmosphere and the efficacy
| of seeding depends on the dynamics/microphysics at play in the
| region of interest. If there is a lack of the specific aerosols
| necessary for condensation and precipitation, cloud seeding has
| shown to be effective to the tune of 5-15% increase in precip
| in certain regions. Water vapor doesn't like to hang out
| available in the atmosphere in large quantities so squeezing it
| out by forcing precipitation via "seeding" isn't really a
| reasonable concept. But to the degree that you do succeed, you
| are extracting water vapor that would have been transported by
| the atmosphere to other neighboring regions.
|
| While there is little evidence that cloud seeding can be done
| at-scale, in a world where someone comes up with a novel+clever
| idea this would mean that the impacts on precipitation in other
| regions would be significant. Again, no free lunch. It's not a
| stretch to imagine turning that into a competitive advantage or
| using it as a warfare tactic.
|
| If there were large bands of moisture just waiting to fall out
| of the sky we would be living in a very different climate.
| Aerosols are far too common on earth. In fact, the Arctic is
| one of the only places seeding makes a lot of sense with
| supercooled water and a distinct lack of aerosols in the clean
| environment. But in my research I have yet to come across much
| agriculture up there much less agrarian societies ;)
| crznp wrote:
| If we imagine that excess water from Wyoming is used to grow
| crops in California, it seems reasonable to assume that it
| would be less moisture/precipitation for Nebraska.
|
| But if it is used to grow wheat in Colorado (because the
| obligations to lower-basin states need to be met regardless
| and the increased moisture allows more diversions across the
| continental divide), then it probably ends up evaporating
| anyway or else in the Platte River. It wouldn't be stealing
| moisture from Nebraska, they might actually benefit from it.
|
| Geo-engineering might not have a free lunch, but it also
| isn't a zero-sum game.
| galuvian wrote:
| Maybe and yes. It violates the Geneva Convention. But I'm sure
| there would be ways to 'justify it' if a country wanted to do
| so.
|
| I had expected that it was not economically viable for
| agriculture, but the article has one source claiming it is
| actually quite affordable, given current water prices in the
| west.
|
| A large portion of the article tries to give both sides a
| voice.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_warfare
| jjk166 wrote:
| Cloud seeding alters precipitation patterns by single digit
| percentages. While this might be economically important, it
| would probably not be an effective method of hydrological
| warfare. Only a very select set of places could be targeted, it
| would take a very long time to have any practical effect, and
| it would be obvious long beforehand what was happening and who
| was doing it. Seems like a really easy way to give your
| neighbor a casus belli against you while in no way restricting
| their ability to wage war.
| cheekibreeki2 wrote:
| I remember when cloud seeding was a conspiracy theory until the
| Chinese admitted doing it for the Olympics..
| chefandy wrote:
| >> I remember when cloud seeding was a conspiracy theory until
| the Chinese admitted doing it for the Olympics..
|
| For which Olympics? 1972? Here's an ABC nightly news feature
| story about cloud seeding, including a demo, from over a decade
| ago.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwonVY_cNS4
| discodave wrote:
| Beijing Olympics was 2008, that's 15 years ago.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23397205
| volleygman180 wrote:
| [flagged]
| 8note wrote:
| What's the conspiracy exactly? Is it just a description of
| cloud seeding in Alberta? Cloud seeding in Alberta to reduce
| hail damage is well documented and well advertised
| ineedasername wrote:
| It seems like there are long term problems with this approach
| that will just cause bigger issues because seeding the clouds
| will either
|
| 1) Give you the water you were going to get anyway, only you get
| it a bit earlier, and assuming there are no other wider ripple
| effects of doing this (a _huge_ assumption to make) then you 're
| just going to wait even longer in between the seeded clouds and
| the next batch that weather patterns would serve up. So now
| you're even worse off when the seeded cloud water is used up and
| the interval to the next bit is extended [1]
|
| _Or_
|
| 2) You're taking water from clouds that would normally have
| dropped it elsewhere, which just shifts the problem by depriving
| some other region of the water it relies on. [1]
|
| _Or_
|
| 3) lots of other possibilities I'm not smart enough to think up
| because weather and climate systems are complicated and the laws
| around water rights are complicated and I have no domain
| expertise in either. Though I suppose that's the issue right
| there: If even I can see swiss cheese holes in the problems with
| this plan then it's bound to end poorly for someone.
|
| [1] I mean, I'm guessing there's only so much moisture in the air
| and that taking some out prematurely isn't likely to shift the
| overall system in a way that makes up for that gap. And even if
| it did it's still unlikely to preserve the system in a way that
| keeps the water flowing to where it would have gone without
| macroscopic human intervention.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >You're taking water from clouds that would normally have
| dropped it elsewhere, which just shifts the problem by
| depriving some other region of the water it relies on.
|
| The majority of rain falls over the ocean, so it _may_ not be
| taking it from somewhere that needs more water.
| munk-a wrote:
| The world is pretty complex - are we sure that causing less
| rainfall over oceans wouldn't have some weird knock on effect
| for the environment? Does fresh water falling on ocean
| surfaces contribute to the known stratification of salinity
| that allows some animals/plants/whatever to be able to
| survive in the top layer of water?
|
| We have a problem: we're farming lettuce in Arizona. It feels
| a lot safer to just stop doing that then try to fix the
| issues with work arounds that might cause bigger issues.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Sure, but in this case what they're taking is from clouds
| that are over land. I have a vague memory that western US
| weather patterns blow in from the pacific and drop it further
| east over the US, so an ocean drop may not be the destiny for
| this particular water. But I absolutely cannot assert this
| with any confidence without falling into the dunning-krueger
| hole. Although I do know just enough about water rights to
| know that doing this could get messy.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| The Rocky Mountains squeeze most of that water out. Here in
| the midwest, we get Gulf hot wet air swirling up, and cold
| Canadian air swirling down, and Wham! we get thunderstorms
| where they meet!
|
| Curiously the water that rains on the East Coast is a sort
| of rolling storm of rain/evaporation/wind/rain-but-further-
| east. A recycling of the same bolus of water over and over
| again. Been going on for millions of years.
| gameshot911 wrote:
| But taking water in the Rockies will have comparatively
| little effect on rainfall in the oceans vs immediate
| surrounding geographies.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Man, kids today with their precautionary principle. Also, this
| whole idea that "the thinking that got us into this mess can't
| get us out."
|
| Or, the world is complicated and progress is complicated and we
| just keep on keeping on because probably they will work out.
|
| Both of these are faith based positions, it seems. But I like
| the latter. The precautionary principle is way too risky for my
| taste.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The issue is there's not a unified "we" here and progress is
| localized. If my region can end a recession by increasing
| rain & agricultural yields we'll certainly do it. If it
| causes a famine in an adjacent region that was already deeply
| impoverished, that's net progress isn't it?
|
| The world _is_ complicated, and the answer to that is
| humility and conservative consideration of specific
| circumstances, not throwing up your hands and figuring it 'll
| all work out. You can't average human life & wellbeing
| together like that.
| rz2k wrote:
| One possibility is that the resulting drier air over a body of
| water downwind will cause the water to evaporate more quickly,
| therefore charging the atmosphere with moisture again more
| quickly, and effectively increasing the total bandwidth of the
| water cycle.
| [deleted]
| plastikmissile wrote:
| > You're taking water from clouds that would normally have
| dropped it elsewhere, which just shifts the problem by
| depriving some other region of the water it relies on
|
| That's an interesting idea. Countries have gone to war over
| water rights. One country builds a dam to hog all the water,
| and the neighboring country gets angry enough to blow up this
| dam. Would seeding clouds take away rain that could have
| dropped on another country that equally needs the rain?
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(page generated 2023-06-21 23:01 UTC)