For centuries, humans have sought ways to control the weather. Beyond occasional coincidences, the reality is that until very recently exercising control over certain meteorological factors was impossible. The question then is: are there technologies to control the climate?
We go in parts. The climate and the weather are different (the weather has to do with the meteorological conditions of the moment and the climate is over a period). Thus scientists aim first to try to control the weather rather than the climate of a region. This is feasible in some cases, but in others it is impossible. For example, control the wind. Basically this is air in movement and it is generated when the Sun heats one part of the atmosphere differently from another. This causes pressure differences: less pressure where it is hotter. Thus the air tries to move from a high pressure area to a low pressure area, and this movement is the wind. To try to reduce it, it would be necessary to coordinate different actions in distant regions, such as having surfaces that absorb heat, to prevent the atmosphere from heating up … impossible.
Cold and heat, on the other hand, respond to planetary cycles in which it is better not to play tricks because when we do (read climate change) we break the balance. What would be possible, according to some experiments, would be to influence rainfall and even snowfall. And one of these examples is very recent and comes to us from China.
For the opening of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the Chinese government launched more than 1,000 rockets to release silver iodide into the city’s sky to clear storm clouds and ensure that the event was not fogged. For the water. The Asian giant has the largest cloud seeding system in the world; they believe that the amount of rain increases in various arid regions where rain is desired. There are even political conflicts sparked by neighboring regions accusing each other of “stealing the rain” by seeding clouds.
The Meteorological Administration of China wants to influence rainfall and snow in 960,000 square kilometers, almost double the area of Spain. More than 150 million euros have been spent for this. The idea is that certain substances, such as silver iodide, could lower the temperature of the clouds and accelerate the condensation process. The theory indicates that this method should work, but the experiments carried out to date leave some doubt.
First, it is not worth seeding any cloud with silver iodide. The ones that have given the best results to date are orographic clouds (those that go from a low area to a higher elevation). In 2017 Sarah Tessendorf, from the National Institute for Atmospheric Research in the United States, carried out an experiment in orographic clouds: she seeded this type of clouds with silver iodide for several days. After less than 30 minutes of seeding, they produced a total, in three days of experiment, of enough water to fill 282 Olympic-size swimming pools.
It sounds like a lot, but the reality, according to Tessendorf data, is that it represents only a 10% increase in the total. Better alternatives will have to be found.
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