Control the Rain - Cloud Seeding

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."

Comments

Sucks to be the little people....

[malakai]

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

Re:Weather Control

[metamathica]

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.

Rain-making linked to killer flood

[eddy the lip]

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

Re:Vietnam?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.