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Can Researchers Make It Rain?
Can Researchers Make It Rain?
Can Researchers Make It Rain?
Some areas struggle with torrential rains, others with drought. In hot areas,
rain is precious. Could artificial rain help in times of drought?
Water is constantly evaporating into the atmosphere from our seas, lakes
and other waterways. If the conditions are right, it forms clouds. And if the
air cools enough as it rises, the water vapour molecules will begin to form
droplets or ice crystals. If a droplet becomes large enough, gravity may
overcome the air currents holding it up, and if the droplet or crystal doesn’t
evaporate as it falls, there will be rain.
In hot areas, such as on the Arabian Peninsula, the evaporation of water is
not a problem – the temperature during the day is always above 20 degrees
Celsius, even in winter, with summer temperatures often going above 45
degrees. Clouds do form, but the water in them rarely makes it back to the
ground: there are, on average, only about five to ten rainy days per year,
and some years have no rain at all.
The oil-rich United Arab Emirates desalinates billions of litres of sea water
every day, but this is expensive and further contributes to global warming,
as the desalination plants typically need oil or natural gas to function.
This is why the country is now struggling to discover how the water in the
skies could be brought back to the ground.
Artificial rain
Meteorology and physics researchers from the Kumpula Campus are about
to head to the dry Arabian Peninsula to see what kinds of aerosol particles
could generate rain clouds.
The Finns intend to survey the role of aerosol particles in the formation of
clouds and rain. Aerosols are liquid or solid particles that float in the air.
They are released into the atmosphere from traffic, sandy deserts and
forest fires. Some of them become cores around which rain drops and ice
crystals form.
The research may reveal whether seeding aerosol particles into the clouds
could help produce rain. If a suitable particle is found to serve as the core
for raindrops in the climate of the UAE, these particles could be sprinkled
onto the clouds from planes to generate artificial rain.
Such manmade rain would surely be popular in other dry and hot areas as
well. It could be a key tool in relieving global poverty and hunger.
But there is still a long way to go. Much more research is needed to
confirm the efficacy of cloud seeding to provide help where it is needed.
Cloud seed-ing
The concept of making rain is not new. People have tried to change the
weather throughout history through a variety of rituals, and science-based
efforts to control rain have been made since the 1930s.
Research into rainmaking was still generously funded during the 1970s
and 80s, but enthusiasm gradually waned in the absence of reliable results,
according to Hannele Korhonen, research professor at the Finnish
Meteorological Institute.
“But cloud seeding experiments keep being conducted, based on previous
research and hope. They are being done in up to 50 countries, even though
the results of the method have been difficult to establish.”
Silver iodide is typically used in cloud seeding, as its structure is similar to
that of ice crystals. Silver iodide was used during the Sochi and Beijing
Olympics – the substance was released into the clouds before they reached
the stadium to make them rain where it would cause no trouble.
At least, that is the intention.
“The problem is that once the cloud has been seeded, there is nothing to
compare the results to,” Korhonen says.
Another problem is that silver iodide is toxic, even though it is used in
extremely low concentrations in cloud seeding.
Crystal cores
The Finnish researchers are going to the UAE primarily to conduct basic
research – to find out whether cloud seeding can be scientifically justified,
and if so, what kinds of aerosol particles should be used to generate rain.
The work will be based on measurements and simulations; nothing will be
released into the clouds at this stage.
The efforts to find the most suitable particles are led by Hanna
Vehkamäki, professor of aerosol physics at the University of Helsinki.
Her group will develop a molecular simulation to discover what kinds of
particle surfaces are likely to generate ice.
“The atmosphere has an untold amount of particles, and only a tiny
fraction of them, perhaps one tenth of a percentage, can serve as cores for
ice crystals. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Vehkamäki.
Atom by atom
The size range of the aerosol particles is astounding. While the smallest are
a five-thousandth of the width of a human hair in diameter, others can be
more than twice the width of a hair. Neither can the particles be easily
divided into those that attract and those that repel water – the solution lies
in microscopic details which are a formidable task to image precisely, even
for today’s supercomputers. The researchers would have to know in which
position the first water molecule collides with the aerosol particle.
“We have to build the model atom by atom and molecule by molecule,”
says Vehkamäki.
The particle simulations are just a tiny component of a vast research topic.
The Finnish Meteorological Institute is in charge of a larger sector, cloud
modelling. This modelling hopes to discover how the particles seeded into
the clouds impact the properties of the clouds and rain formation in various
circumstances.