Hello weather world! I have my most recent review of Edwin Kessler’s, Comments on Cloud Seeding. Take a look:
Summary
Kessler outlines the origin of seeding as discovered by Schaefer which required stimulation via frozen liquid droplets to transfer their vapor in result in cloud development. Furthermore, he suggests other theories would use additional research with this topic to alter precipitation, fog, hail size reduction, and hurricane wind. Kessler then looks to outline the various suggestions for “numerical simulation. He states, “cloud seeding could be simulated in such a model by setting a reduced threshold for autoconversion of cloud in a limited area. He also brings to light how there may be a flaw in the idea of these physical process alterations by neglecting to note how, “stimulation of rain from one cloud might have on the quantity of rain subsequently produced downwind and from other nearby clouds. He then leads into how rainfall in one region changes the atmospheric moisture as the parcel of air moves to a new location, then altering rainfall somewhere else. Kessler also includes the field experiments from west Texas and their findings. We’re shown:
Rosenfeld and Woodley – silver iodide seeding in Big Spring, Texas. Kessler believes that while this study was efficient in studying the local changes in precipitation, they failed to address the impact of surrounding systems.
Woodley and Solak – cloud seeding and rainfall augmentation in San Angelo, Texas. This study included aircraft equipped with, “wingborne silver iodide plus acetone generators as well as with flares,”. Kessler suggests that while this study shows coinciding rainfall at the time of cloud seeding, he believes this is merely coincidence and that the study would go against previous research by providing data that is significantly more successful. Thus, he believes the results in this study are merely coincidental.
Jones – cloud seeding on the Colorado River Municipal Water District. Kessler notes that this study is far too vague in their data selection. They didn’t do seeding during times of natural precipitation causes. Thus, he said that their data more than likely is purely natural precipitation rather than the results of exclusive cloud seeding.
In conclusion, Kessler accepts that the future of cloud seeding practices should do serious examination and evaluate the necessity of the study considering so few studies actually reap reasonable conclusion.
3 Things for more study
- Cloud seeding in regions with the lowest precipitation values. All of the studies Kessler looked at were in the mid-west or south U.S. but were relatively close to large sources of water. Is there a reasonable study to be done in regions with very little water bases?
- In Kessler’s conclusion he suggests that modern research efforts and development of cloud seeding should use technological advances to numerically model the design and methods for additional study but he doesn’t discuss more about what’s already being used right now that is to be improved with technology as well as what technology and modeling is needed for accuracy.
- The Oklahoma City 1997 legislation which granted money in order to redeem the local agriculture from a radically dry year. I would like to see more information as to what they did and why they found moderate success. Kessler mentions this in his conclusion and follows light background of this study by claiming that “no program has confirmed useful increase of precipitation at the ground in the Great Plains,”. I would want to see why Oklahoma’s research was more successful than others. Was it funding? Was it location?
Modern Meteorology
I think Kessler gives a rather negative approach to the study of cloud seeding and is rather blunt with his belief that the study of cloud seeding is so difficult to perform and gather accurate information because of how many different variables are in play when it comes to precipitation and cloud formation movement. I believe there is great findings within this research but there would need to be a way to appropriately seclude cloud seeding results from the impact of natural air mass movement and augmentation..
With that being said, I understand how crazy hard it is in order to get filtered data that is in real life information rather than in a lab created simulation. Modern meteorology should strive to find technology that can pick up the iodide traces in rainfall and use that to track which rainfall comes from which precipitation event.
Thanks for reading! Goodnight!
