Amid the seek for options to international warming, numerous types of geoengineering have gained traction. The extra wild concepts—like spraying mud into area to dam out among the solar’s rays—are nonetheless being debated. However within the meantime, climate modification within the type of cloud seeding has been applied in numerous components of the world, most just lately within the Western US.

Cloud seeding is most frequently executed by releasing compounds like silver iodide into clouds. The chemical compounds operate as a form of scaffold that water molecules latch onto, changing into heavy sufficient to drop to the bottom as rain. It’s not a brand new expertise; international locations all over the world have used it for many years to generate rainfall for crops, and the US authorities even used it in the course of the Vietnam Battle to extend rainfall throughout monsoon season and make the terrain muddy and troublesome to traverse for enemy fighters.

However the want for cloud seeding is changing into extra pressing and extra widespread as temperatures rise, significantly in areas that had been already historically scorching and dry. One such space is the Southwest US; New Mexico and West Texas have by no means been generally known as lush or damp, so now that it’s getting hotter and there’s much less rainfall, it’s not shocking that cloud seeding is coming in useful. Extra shocking is the expertise’s use in close by states that historically have been wetter, like Colorado, California, and Utah.

The Wall Road Journal reported final weekend that cloud seeding packages are presently underway in all of those states (in addition to Nevada, Idaho, and Mexico), with spending on the expertise reaching as much as $12 million in a single yr.

The additional rainfall isn’t only for crops. With water ranges in essential reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell just lately reaching historic lows, all the pieces from residential water provide to hydropower era could possibly be underneath risk (although because of heavy snowfall within the Colorado Rockies this previous winter, Lake Powell’s water stage ricocheted again up this spring, rising greater than 41 ft because the starting of 2023).

Colorado’s St. Vrain water district spent $40,000 final yr for winter cloud seeding to extend snowfall within the surrounding mountains. However one drawback with cloud seeding is that it’s troublesome to show it really works. Perhaps there’s extra rainfall after releasing silver iodide into the air above a given area—however how do we all know there wouldn’t have been extra rainfall regardless?

Nevertheless, there’s loads of proof that factors to actual outcomes. A examine carried out in Idaho’s Payette Basin space within the winter of 2017 discovered that cloud seeding produced sufficient snow to fill 300 Olympic-size swimming pools in contrast with clouds that weren’t seeded.

In 2021 the UAE’s Nationwide Middle of Meteorology started seeding clouds close to Dubai. Notably, they used a distinct approach: quite than releasing silver iodide or different chemical compounds into the air, they used drones with cost emitters, which zapped cloud molecules with an electrical cost. Altering the stability of prices on tiny cloud droplets causes them to mix and type raindrops. Within the wake of this exercise, it rained a lot that some streets in Dubai flooded—a uncommon prevalence for the dry desert metropolis.

Advocates of cloud seeding say their information present the expertise can improve rainfall by 15 %, as in comparison with areas the place clouds aren’t seeded. That provides as much as round two additional inches of rain a yr. It doesn’t sound like a lot, however significantly in very dry locations, it’s sufficient to maintain crops alive, and it contributes to shoring up underground aquifers.

In lots of components of the US, we take water without any consideration. We activate the faucet, and out it flows, clear and considerable. However this will not be the case sooner or later; water is prone to turn out to be the brand new gold, and discovering methods to get extra of it can turn out to be essential to our well-being and survival.

Whereas cloud seeding is presently extra viable than options like desalination, there’s a restrict to how a lot we are able to manipulate the pure order earlier than we find yourself with undesired knock-on results. For now, pumping chemical compounds into clouds will tide us over properly sufficient—however in time we’ll seemingly must discover a completely different approach to make it rain, or abandon the driest areas altogether.

Picture Credit score: FelixMittermeier from Pixabay