RACING WITH THE CLOUDS

 Cloud wars: Mideast rivalries rise along a new front (Alissa J. Rubin, 8/28/22,  New York Times)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/28/world/cloud-wars-mideast-rivalries-rise-along-new-front/

As the Middle East and North Africa dry up, countries in the region have embarked on a race to develop the chemicals and techniques that they hope will enable them to squeeze raindrops out of clouds that would otherwise float fruitlessly overhead.

 

 

 

 

 How to make it rain: Cloud seeding to combat drought: Humans can influence the weather ― to a degree. Today, cloud seeding, or artifical rain, is mostly used to bring water to drought-ravaged regions. But it's also been misused in the past. (Deutsche Welle, 8/24/22) 

https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-make-it-rain-cloud-seeding-to-combat-drought/a-62914900?maca=en-rss-en-top-1022-rdf

Clouds form when air containing water vapor rises into the atmosphere, cools and forms icy particles. Once enough of those particles clump together, a cloud forms. Inside the cloud, the icy particles combine.

When the combined droplets have grown large and heavy enough, they fall to the ground as some form of precipitation: Rain, snow or hail, depending on the temperature and other weather conditions.

With cloud seeding, small particles of silver iodide, a salt with a crystalline structure similar to that of ice, are added to clouds. This process can be performed either from a plane or drone, or particles can be shot up from the ground.

The method allows the water vapor inside clouds to be "tricked" into forming droplets around the silver iodide particles, Jose Miguel Vinas, a meteorologist with Meteored, a Spanish company that runs weather websites in several countries, told DW.

Once the droplets become heavy enough ― a process that is accelerated by the addition of the silver iodide ― they drop from the clouds as precipitation.