Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Making it rain?

I just heard a story on NPR about how Beijing is preparing for next year's Olympic Games. (slated to start one year from today- 08.08.08 at 8:08 p.m.)

The thing that piqued my interest (and concern!) was the fact that they apparently planning on seeding all clouds in the region with silver nitride to cause them to empty before reaching venues.

I didn't know this was possible, but find it to be very disturbing. I'm going to have to do some research, but this has to have some unhappy environmental consequences, right? And if not, why don't the powers that be (worldwide) seed clouds to make them dump in more desirable places (like corn fields) and less in undesirable places (like beaches?)

If it's really that easy, it seems like just the sort of insipid and manipulative thing in which governments should take part on a regular basis.

So, who can tell me about silver nitride cloud seeding before I have to go look it up?

1 comment:

shivajirao said...

Rain can be made to fall over a place considered as a target area.
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Cloud seeding is done to make the clouds give more rain than what they do due to scarcity of ice-nucleii in cold clouds and scarcity of Giant hygroscopic condensation nuclei in case of warm clouds.When clouds with adequate moisture and water content are seen through the radar pictures to travel in the direction of the selected regions,we have to go upwind for seeding purposes 30 to 45 km,based on the local wind speeds so that precipitation occurs within 40 to 45 minutes of the chemical reactions that trigger the cloud drops transformation into large-sized rain drops which fall on earth.Thus clouds can be made to give rain only in selected target areas by conducting the operations as per standard procedures prescribed as per protocols followed in Australia,Texas and other places.For more details see the online treatise on cloud seeding at the web site:
http://www.gitam.edu/old/www.gitam.edu/science/envstud/English-Book.pdf
prof.T.Shivaji Rao,Director.Centre for environment,Gitam University,
visakhapatnam.India. and Expert,cloud seeding project of Government of Andhra pradesh.india