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Control the Rain - Cloud Seeding

Posted by michael on from the stormy-weather dept.

Zzzt writes "The Times Online reports that Russian president Putin will assure plesant weather at the Russian St. Petersburg 300th anniversary festival by seeding clouds. They plan to shoot dry ice into the clouds to get the moisture to condense prematurely. 'Vladimir Stepanenko, head physicist of St Petersburg's Geophysics Observatory, said: 'Our aim is to empty all clouds of rain before they hit the city borders.'' There is also brief mention of other fun things Russians do with weather control."

35 comments

  1. In mother russia by Loosewire · · Score: 3, Funny

    The weather no longer controls you :(

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    1. Re:In mother russia by aoteoroa · · Score: 2, Informative

      What's up with the offtopic mod? The post couldn't be more on topic. Redundant maybe because it's yet another "In Soviet Russia" joke but this time it was actually funny.

  2. Vietnam? by Bob+Zer+Fish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I seem to remember someone saying that the Americans attempted to use this ploy against the Vietnamese. The vietnamese, being quite good at irrigiation, just irrgated huge areas of land, and the rain just was diverted elsewhere. Can anyone verify this?

    1. Re:Vietnam? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Operation Popeye is what you are referring to. It was marginally successful. They had better luck seeding storm fronts of hurricanes that were aimed at cuba. Now they use much more sophisticated techniques, primarily atmospheric heating in front of weather fronts. First they have to introduce target chemicals so they have something better to focus directed energy on.

  3. Who ya gonna call? Cloudbusters! by AtariAmarok · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All the Russians need is one of Wilhelm Reich's cloudbusters to do whatever they want with the clouds! They'd better make sure they dress up like the Sean Connery weather guy from "The Avengers" movie while they use it.

    "But everytime it rains

    You're here in my head

    Like the sun coming out

    Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen"     Cloudbusting, by Kate Bush.

    --
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  4. Weather Control by rudy_wayne · · Score: 1

    I've always thought that a lot more work and research should be done on weather control. Things like floods, snow storms and hurricanes cost us Billions of dollars every year. Even if you can't eliminate them, if you could partially disperse or diminish them, the savings would be well worth it.

    1. Re:Weather Control by metamathica · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Things like floods, snow storms and hurricanes are highly unlikely to be altered. In the places where they happen, they are elements of the climate, not the weather.

      The difference is an important one, and lost on most people. Weather varies from hour to hour, and is fundamentally impossible to predict precisely . Climate is large-scale observations, like how hot the summer will be (in general) and how cold the winter. Predictions of climate are much simpler, and not limited by chaotic interrelations.

      Seeding the clouds is not new. The ski mountain where I grew up has been doing it for years to get early snow. It's easy to make a little rain or move it a little upwind; it's probably near impossible to make controllable climatic changes.

      We have already made significant climatic changes by emitting greenhouse and ozone-depleting gases. Because climate is such a large-scale phenomenon, those are the sorts of changes that will change it. Changing the climate is a very bad thing, and our changes already threaten to make life on earth considerably less pleasant if we're not careful.

      People who don't understand this distinction often wonder how we could predict global warming when we can't predict the weather. The average temperature during a month is a basically a thermodynamic function of incoming solar radiation, thermal reradiation and heat shielding. The chaotic local effects mostly cancel out on larger scales.

    2. Re:Weather Control by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 1

      For a good quick analogy on how hard it is to predict the weather vs. how hard it is to predict climate change, just drop a crisp new dollar bill out of your hand. Now try to predict exactly where it will land. Fairly impossible to do. That's weather prediction.

      Now take 20 steps to your left and do it again. The only thing you can correctly predict is that the dollar bill will almost certainly land well to the left of its former landing position. That's climate prediction.

      While no analogy is perfect, that one seems to be very successful at conveying the principles to the uninitiated.

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    3. Re:Weather Control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While no analogy is perfect, that one seems to be very successful at conveying the principles to the uninitiated.

      So you're telling me that climate prediction is 20x more expensive than weather prediction? Then I still don't understand why we can't spend the same amount on weather prediction and get it right.

    4. Re:Weather Control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Was that supposed to be funny? Are you drunk?

    5. Re:Weather Control by sebmol · · Score: 1

      Right. I can already see companies or the government screwing up trying to control the weather with consequences we can barely imagine. We don't know how weather works and we certainly don't know why certain things happen the way they do. Thinking that with this kind of knowledge we could change the weather in a foreseeable manner is presumptuous at best, fatal at worst.

      There is no doubt in my mind that we have the technology and energy requires to significantly influence the weather. But there's also no doubt in my mind that we have no clue as to what such intervention would cause. Since experimenting with the weather is kinda tough until we manage to do interplanetary travel cost- and effortlessly and use other--preferrably uninhabited--planets, it might make more sense to invest resources on that than building the 21st century equivalent of the atom bomb.

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  5. Weather control. Isengard style by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "I've always thought that a lot more work and research should be done on weather control"

    I'm all for it if the end result includes a wizard standing on a tower chanting in Elvish in order to move storm clouds.

  6. Correcting the history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "I seem to remember someone saying that the Americans attempted to use this ploy against the Vietnamese. The vietnamese, being quite good at irrigiation"

    The combatants in this conflict were the Vietnamese and Americans vs the Soviet Union. Therefore, this was a ploy that the Soviets used against Vietnam and its ally America.

    1. Re:Correcting the history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Is it eastasia or westasia that we've always been at war with, Mr. Orwell?

  7. Making it rain in Russia by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is a hell of lot more than a butterfly flapping its wings in China.

    It occurs to me that we could use more research and that maybe we ought to deal with weather modification on an international level (global weather maps, climate history, meteorological cooperation) rather than on a more local one?

    Not crying 'Wolf' here but it wouldn't be a bad idea.

    --

    Operator, give me the number for 911!
    1. Re:Making it rain in Russia by sebmol · · Score: 1

      Of course under the lead of the US of A, right? Countries already fight wars over one country upstream cutting off the water supply to countries further down. Imagine what kind of quarrels controlling the weather on an international level could cause. Not to mention the fact that you just created a weapon as nuclear ones without the mess of post-war radiation and nuclear winters.

      --
      "Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
  8. Sucks to be the little people.... by malakai · · Score: 4, Funny
    from the article:
    Approximately one kilogram of dry ice is used for every square kilometre of rain cloud. Rainclouds will be burst at a safe distance of 30 miles (50km) outside the city, where locals, used to sudden rain on fine days, will have their umbrellas ready

    For the good of mother russia you will enjoy a shitty Friday. Dosvidanya!

    Russia's first private weather controlling agency, the Atmosphere Technologies Agency, will be taking part in the delicate operation. It is hoping for rainclouds. "No rainclouds equals no pay," Viktor Petrov, the deputy director, said.

    Man, what a business model...

    -Malakai
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    -Malakai
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    1. Re:Sucks to be the little people.... by Echnin · · Score: 1
      Man, what a business model...

      Capitalism and greed at their finest. That business model is what many companies go by; if there isn't a problem to fix, they don't get money for fixing it. Sometimes people will create a problem so they'll get money for fixing it. Socialism eradicates those problems.

      --
      Lalala
    2. Re:Sucks to be the little people.... by Shoggoth+of+Maul · · Score: 2, Funny

      Especially when it would be a helluva lot cheaper to just pass out umbrellas. Imagine:

      "Vladimir Putin Designer Umbrellas! The Fashion Statement of the Season!"
      "What season is it, by the way?"
      "I dunno. Now that we control the weather, it's kinda hard to tell."

  9. I'll start it off by breon.halling · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    In SOVIET RUSSIA....

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    1. Re:I'll start it off by Sherloqq · · Score: 1

      In capitalist America... the weather controls YOU!

      --
      Have EVDO, will travel.
  10. Rain-making linked to killer flood by eddy+the+lip · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm sure advances have been since 1952, but I still think I'd avoid St. Petersburg (or at least the outlying villages). It didn't work out so well for the Brits.

    Artificial rain making operations may have caused a storm that nearly wiped out an English village in 1952. New evidence has emerged that the UK's Royal Air Force was carrying out cloud seeding experiments that could in theory have led to the disaster.
    New Scientist Article
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    1. Re:Rain-making linked to killer flood by retostamm · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's also done in the US on a regular basis, regulated by the Government

      Licensing:
      http://www.license.state.tx.us/weath er/weathermod. htm

      History:
      http://twri.tamu.edu/twripubs/WtrResrc /v20n2/text- 2.html

      Weather Modification Association (since 1950)
      http://www.weathermodification.org/

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    2. Re:Rain-making linked to killer flood by wossName · · Score: 1

      Interesting, maybe the inspiration for this Avengers episode (and the horrible movie adaptation) ?

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  11. Red Alert 2 by C0LDFusion · · Score: 1

    I thought the Allies had the Weather Control. Oh, well. We got nukes. Ain't a bad trade.

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  12. Nothing new by gehrehmee · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This sort of technique is used frequently here in Alberta, Canada, to stop hail storms from reaching urban or agricultural areas.

    --
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  13. Hope they will pour some oil into Baltic sea by Muhammar · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...to calm the waves. And prevent the earthquake by releasing tectonic tensions with few megatonns detonated underground. They should also facade-lift the buildings, clean the rooftops, paint the grass greener in parks and re-locate all unsightly individuals out of city.

    --
    I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
  14. Socialism and greed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Socialism eradicates those problems"

    Huh? Socialism makes all the problems of capitalism much worse. It lets the ruling class maximise their greed with no accountability or competition; after all, under socialism the rulers own everything and the people own nothing.

  15. Operation Popeye by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    They had better luck seeding storm fronts of hurricanes that were aimed at cuba.

    You call the devistation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and the consequent enormous costs for recovery there luck?

    Cuba never got a fraction of what Haiti had to deal with courtesy of Uncle Sam.

  16. Colorado ski resorts... by dargaud · · Score: 1
    ...have been paying a lot of money to get the same thing done above their lands for many years now. But no one has been able to statistically prove that it indeed changes something.

    Yes, I work in atmospheric research.

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  17. Similar discussion on Slashdot by foxed · · Score: 1

    See this Slashdot discussion from December on similar topics.

  18. I found a good google cache of info on this. by AForwardMotion · · Score: 0

    The web site itself is down, but a google cache of it shows a lot of good information on military and civlian tampering of weather. You have to highlight it to see it since the background is black. Enjoy.

  19. And the link is by AForwardMotion · · Score: 0

    http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:qJOjRCbmx8cJ: www3.bc.sympatico.ca/Willthomas/WeatherWarfare/Wea therwar.htm++Operation+Popeye&hl=en&ie=UTF -8 - The imbecile