What is weather control?

'Weather Control' is a way of manipulating the weather conditions in order to suit man's needs.

What weather can be controlled?

One weather type that can be controlled to a certain extent is rainfall. By releasing crystals of silver iodide, dry ice2 and sea salt onto area of clouds from aeroplane, rain can be promoted. The crystal provide a nucleus around which the rain mass can gather. Eventually, this becomes big enough to make a droplet - and then you've got rain.

In theory that sounds good, so why isn't this done is periods of water shortage or drought?

Well firstly, this system is very expensive, and only small amounts of precipitation are created from a large amount of materials, and effort! Additionally, scientists are as yet unsure whether this systems 'creates' any new rain, or simply just changes the place in which the rain falls. It is possible that the rain 'created' may have fallen somewhere else naturally.

Isn't it dangerous to mess with nature?

Yes, and accidents have happened in the past. In 1947, a hurricane 'seeding' experiment went wrong. The course of the hurricane changed, causing large amounts of damage. Also, in Australia, controlled floods caused crop damage. Because of the danger, weather control is banned in many countries of the world.

Is it possible to prevent unwanted weather phenomena?

Yes, but only to varying degrees of success. In China, hail causes tremendous damage to crops. The Chinese have developed a system by which they fire shots of chemicals at the hail storms. The resultant effect is that the hail droplets become rain droplets. The rain is far less damaging. This system is only practical, and value for money, in limited cases.

Value for money has meant that other systems are not used. Oil burning can reduce fog, and this was done in the Second World War. However, a vast amount of oil is used, and so this is done very rarely.

So, as yet, weather control is normally not worthwhile?

Weather control is a young science and has only really been pursued in the last twenty years. It is likely that weather control will play a more important part as it becomes more feesible in the future.