UK Team to Study Rainmaking Machines

RobertB-DC writes "The BBC reports that a Edinburgh University team has received a grant to research Wind-Powered Rainmaking Machines. You have to have winds blowing towards a mountainous coastline, but the article says that the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are well-suited. For a cautionary note, though, the BBC includes a link to the story of a 1952 cloud-seeding experiment gone terribly wrong."

Comments

Re:screwing with weather?

[perfessor multigeek]

Irrigation doesn't affect the weather?
It certainly does on this planet, boyo.

Irrigated areas create different wind profiles, put water into the atmosphere (after all, that's how plants get water, it gets pulled up through the roots into the body of the plant by the capillary force of the water that's *already* evaporating off the leaves), and usually correlate with changes in species distribution and surface temperature.
Are these changes necessarily bad? A messy question. But they certainly take place.
Facts, ol' son. Start by getting facts.
Rustin

Seeding the rain

[nadaou]

In regards to the great flood of '52, I've got to repeat the old mantra.. "correlation does not predicate causality." (eg, "everyone who goes to the dentist dies")

It is very very hard to seed clouds. You've got to get the silver iodide (or whatever) concentration just right- too many condensation nuclei and all you get is suspended fog. Too few, and the dropplets grow too slowly (collision is a major growth process). There've been many attempts over the years, but it is really really hard to prove correlation in the wild.. (send refs if you know otherwise!)

Even if you can make clouds, it doesn't mean you make rain. At all.

Now if they could only figure out the upper reflection vs greenhouse effect balance, more clouds might help solve our global warming problem. Or make it much worse.

..if even just 5% of our research science budget went to blue sky research, it would be a good thing (and IMO would pay back ++). If only our 'philosopher king' were less of a king and more of a philosopher...

Creating is not theft.

[twitter]

The zero sum game always amazes me. Why is it that people just can't see beyond it. The article says:

Professor Salter told the BBC: "We are trying to break through the layer of rather stagnant, humid air that's at the very, very bottom of the atmosphere, in contact with the sea surface, and lift large volumes of water through this and squirt them out from 10 metres up in the air as a very fine spray, with a very big surface area."

This is creation, not theft. They are taking moisture from the sea and putting it in the air. As all that water will end up back in the sea and the chances that this project will lower sea level are nil, no one has lost anything. Those who feel the rain will have gained much.

If ten meters is all you need, I would try chimneys to suck the moist air up. No moving parts, cheap to prefabricate, easy to errect.