• Question: Do you think we will be able to control the weather

    Asked by immz to Angela, Claire, Ian, Robert, Sarah on 16 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Angela Stokes

      Angela Stokes answered on 16 Nov 2014:

      Hi immz
      Unlikely I think!
      Humans have dreamed of taking control of the weather for decades.

      Growing concerns over climate change and major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the deadly tornado outbreaks in Oklahoma have only increased our desire to stop severe weather in its tracks. We’ve put vehicles on Mars and invented the Internet — why can’t we alter the weather?

      It hasn’t been for lack of trying. In the last 200 years, the clouds have proven a resilient adversary, resisting well-funded and imaginative attempts at manipulation by meteorologists, physicists and hobbyists.

      Ideas have ranged from building massive rain towers to alleviate drought to using anti-aircraft guns loaded with silver iodide to keep rain away from the Beijing Olympics.

    • Photo: Sarah Harris

      Sarah Harris answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      It would be great, but unlikely. I don’t think even scientists are a real match for mother nature, but we’re getting better at predicting it and coping with what it throws at us!

    • Photo: Ian Cade

      Ian Cade answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      In some ways we already can (two ways that spring to mind are):

      Chopping down forests (for example clearing Brazilian rainforest to create new pastures for cows) tends to decrease rainfall nearby.

      Rainfall can also be altered by ‘cloud seeding’ – increasing the dust in the air. This works because cloud formation starts by water vapour condensing around dust particles. This seeding is often done with silver salts like silver iodide but other materials have been used.

Comments