Cloud Seeding: An 80-year-old Technology

 Cloud seeding does not create clouds. Rather, it involves f lying a plane or a drone into naturally forming clouds and releasing small amounts of silver iodide and table salt inside them. Those added particles pull the water vapor out of the clouds, resulting in forced precipitation—either rain or snow. “Silver iodide is a favored seeding agent because its crystalline structure is nearly identical to the natural ice crystal,” the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) states on its website. “When placed in the upper portion of the growing convective cloud rich with supercooled droplets, the silver iodide crystal can grow rapidly by tapping that vast field of available moisture. “In a matter of moments, the ice crystal is transformed into a large raindrop which is heavy enough to fall through the cloud mass as a rain shaft,” the department added. Under state law, the TDLR is responsible for regulating the use of cloud seeding through a licensing and permitting procedure, and is also charged with promoting its development and demonstration through research. The technology debuted roughly 80 years ago, with the first tests being conducted to increase the snow pack in New York in 1945. Since then, it has been used in various states to increase snowpacks, as well as provide some relief for farmland in times of drought, and replenish aquifers. Where Does Cloud Seeding Happen and When? Rainmaker Technology Corporation's CEO Augustus Doricko said that his company conducts cloud seeding operations in Texas, Utah, southern California, Colorado, and Oregon. In the state of Texas alone, there are multiple weather modification projects that have been ongoing for decades, covering tens of millions of acres, but all activity has been suspended since the floods. Cloud seeding can be under taken at various times of the year. Doricko’s company runs a seasonal operation in Utah from October to April, supplementing the snowpack in anticipation of the resulting runoff. Doricko said the operations have an interstate effect. “If we  make more snow in Colorado, that doesn’t just benefit Colorado. That also benefits Utah and New Mexico, and every other state in the Colorado River Basin.” “So is it natural that there would be interstate collaboration and possibly federal collaboration and oversight into these things, because the water does affect everybody in the basin. Cloud Seeding Reporting and Regulations Doricko explained that most of the clients he has are government entities of some level, such as state-level departments of agriculture, or municipal public works. “There are farms and ecosystems and residential utilities and hydroelectric utilities and industries, all of whom demand water. And the water that comes from cloud seeding, it doesn’t come into pipes and go to one specific house; it precipitates over a watershed, and then that water runs off into the rivers and everybody draws it from the reservoirs or the aquifers. And so it’s natural that a lot of our customers are the government,” Doricko added. Federal law requires cloud seeding operations to be report ed at least 10 days in advance to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, NOAA does not have the authority to regulate it. In terms of providing de tailed transparency on the executed operations, there are no requirements. Doricko suggested that more transparency should be required at the federal level so that more concrete data can be provided to the public on how effective cloud seeding is for the country. Cloud Seeding Research, Side Effects, Cost Research has continued on cloud seeding and its effects since the practice began in the late 1940s. Utah’s Division of Water Resources, says cloud seeding is cost effective as it costs be tween $5 and $10 per acre-foot of additional water to increase its average precipitation of its snowpack by 5 to 15 percent. Cloud seeding “doesn’t work just anywhere,” the division said. “The conditions have to be right. Luckily, Utah’s topography, climate and reservoirs make winter snowpack enhancement cost-effective.” The practice has also proved financially beneficial in North Dakota, according to a 2019 study released by North Dakota State University’s Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics. The study showed that cloud seeding operations of the North Dakota Cloud Modification Project increased precipitation for its farmland, but further benefited the agricultural industry when combined with efforts to suppress annual amounts of crop-destroying hail. The university studied nine crops from 2008 to 2017 and found that cloud seeding yield ed an annual benefit of $12.20 to $21.16 per planted acre while costing about $0.40 per planted acre. “Rainfall enhancement at 10 percent and crop-hail per planted acre reduction of 45 percent yields estimated economic returns of more than $53 dollars for every $1 spent on the program,” the study noted. When that rainfall enhancement is reduced to 5 percent, the return showed nearly $31 for every dollar spent. Contrails & Geoengineering Cloud seeding is different from condensation trails—also called contrails or chemtrails— and geo-engineering. Doricko cited the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new webpage, which explains that contrails are a normal phenomenon of aircraft flying in cold air. Geo-engineering, on the other hand, is a different matter. One kind is solar radiation modification, which involves putting reflective particles in the atmosphere to dim the sun’s rays and cool the Earth. Unlike contrails, it is something that Doricko said needs to be taken seriously. “Dimming the sun like that is another real technology that we need to take very seriously,” he said. “It’s not cloud seeding. It does happen in the atmosphere, but otherwise it’s not related to cloud seeding in any capacity.” He said that while the small crystals used in cloud seeding are dropped back to earth after the clouds dissipate, and only affect one particular area for a short amount of time, these other particles stay in the atmosphere and have an immediate global effect. There are now moves in several states to ban, not just cloud seeding, but weather modification in general. In May, Florida passed legislation banning all forms of weather modification within its borders, although it previously allowed cloud seeding, authorized through the state Department of Environmental Protection. Some lawmakers at the federal level, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) want the practice banned out right. “I want clean air, clean skies, clean rain water, clean ground water, and sunshine just like God created it,” she wrote in a post on X on July 5. “No person, company, entity, or government should ever be allowed to modify our weather by any means possible!!” Still, Doricko is determined to push for more understanding, acceptance, and utilization of cloud seeding across the country. He sees harvesting the precipitation naturally lost to the ocean, not only as a means to eliminate drought and drying rivers, but to even green deserts and increase the amount of farmable landscape in the United States.