Dubai is making its own fake rain to beat 122°F heat(independent.co.uk) |
Dubai is making its own fake rain to beat 122°F heat(independent.co.uk) |
The Maldives, also known for being reliably warm and just 4 degrees north of the equator, has a high even lower, 34.9C, only a handful of countries have a high of lower than that (Iceland and Greenland being two)
Of course they also have the highest record low temperatres (19C and 17.2C each)
I thought that as air temperature rises, the air is able to absorb more heat, not less. And I thought rain was essentially the fact that there is too much moisture in the air, so it condenses. So this is counterintuitive to me (but I am likely missing something).
How it happens, and whether it happens at all, whether the rain won't evaporate in midair etc. depends on variety of conditions.
With geopolitical tensions rising over rights to the Nile, I wonder if rainfall patterns could follow a similar trend.
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sahara-swung-lush-conditions-y...
It will. I think it was The Economist, but it might have been some other magazine, who had an article recently, regarding Chinas usage of cloud seeding.
You're potentially "stealing" rain from other countries or regions. If it was just going into the ocean, then maybe it's fine, but if you're stealing it from a neighbouring country.
The vast majority of the population of the UAE lives in coastal cities and that is where the rain is induced. To the east, west, and north you have large bodies of water and to the south a (mostly) empty desert.
Sounds pretty innocuous. I'm looking forward to reading comments about how this is dangerous and could cause unintended consequences. Only thing I can think of is perhaps that could reduce rainfall in neighboring areas which would have received the rain.
…which seems significant, no? If you fast forward to a water deprived future (uh, present?) and give nation states the ability to take water that would have fallen on neighbouring countries and take it for themselves… I don’t see how that ends well.
Don’t get me wrong, the technology is fascinating and on purely technological terms it’s a great development. But yes, it could lead to some strange outcomes.
I wish (any) parks had this built in (ignoring splash/water parks), because it would be easier justifying brining kids out in this type of heat (especially for parks with no shade due to poor design).
It would also bring more community together to have outdoor areas that are dramatically cooler than the surroundings.
But dry-brining is all the rage right now anyway.
So like … real rain?
Wikipedia has a section on effectiveness, “A study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences failed to find statistically significant support for the effectiveness of cloud seeding.”[1]
It wouldn't be as targetted as a missile strike but you could easily say "it wasn't me!"...
There are some crazy stories related to the HAARP program including opening holes in the ozone layer which caused instaneous skin burning to anyone caught under the hole. Even back in the early days of the internet, it was obvious how the conspiracy circles were going to flourish and push the drek to world. I had never heard of presscore.ca, but based on this article alone, I now know to hopefully never see it again except for examples like in this case.
"A lightning rocket is a rocket that unravels a conductor, such as a fine copper wire, as it ascends, to conduct lightning charges to the ground. Lightning strikes derived from this process are called "triggered lightning."[1][2][3]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rocket
Of course, you can just drop some HE instead. Not sure how much damage lightning actually does.
More prescribed burns in the spring and wet years may help, but I don't think the political willpower is there, given the liability if things get out of hand.
Also what specifically has been 'mismanaged'? Wouldn't leaving nature to run it's course be a reasonable thing to do, or would this imply 'build up and then big fires every century'?
Also, do you know if it's the same in Australia?
Where are Google, Facebook, Apple, SpaceX, California state gov?
And Musk is still focused on LA traffic jams. I guess the worst fires in California state history are not enough to sway the titans of industry into action.
Even though these fires are happening in their back yard.
Why is the word monsoon used for countries in the east and heavy rainfall or other words in the west? Is there a scientific difference?
i guess the conspiracy nuts were right again.
The conspiracy nuts claim it's intentionally being used to make targeted natural disasters (and typically throw in chemtrail stuff), which is a very different claim than "we can probably increase rainfall a little bit'.
I've seen a picture from directly overhead of the Amazon river where you can see clouds forming directly over treetops on either side of the river, but not the tiniest wisp of cloud over the river itself.
this should be illegal
> Applying electrical shocks to clouds is preferred as it doesn’t require the use of chemicals.
So, a bit different than cloud seeding
Glaciogenic seeding typically uses something like silver iodide (to nucleate ice crystals). For the clouds over the UAE (which are not supercooled), table salt would be more likely to be used. This idea is that it can create cloud droplets that are large enough to begin the collision-coalesence process.
Nobody would mind if there was one place on Earth which we would pollute in an extreme way. The problem is when we are polluting all over the place.
Now imagine if every major city started doing weather engineering.
It's unlikely that we would be able to have a giant effect, there is only so much energy we can put out, but local consequences could be pretty drastic. OTOH, local consequences will kind of fall in the same country.
Thank you for the explanation!
[1] https://plant-pest-advisory.rutgers.edu/impact-of-road-salt-...
The mismanagement in this context is a century long policy of extinguishing natural fires and not letting nature 'run its course'.
The policy was briefly lifted in the 60s or 70s do to overwhelming scientific opposition, but reinstated due to public outcry after a few iconic locations burned.
The wikipedia below has some basic starting information, but generally whitewashes history, suggest that policy was corrected in the 80's. IF you dig deeper, around 100,000 acres were allowed to burn per year on federal land in the 90's and 2000's, which is far too low.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppressio...
Slide 4 of the PDF below gives a an example of the fire frequency in the 1800s in comparison to 1900s.
https://ucanr.edu/sites/firesummit/files/302800.pdf
I have no clue about Aussie fire policy, sorry.
The problem is that nobody wants to acknowledge that fire is a necessary and constructive part of the ecosystem. So they build their homes in wildfire zones and support policies that suppress fires until the pot boils over and the fire turns from constructive to utterly destructive.