The American West is in a horrifying drought and the deleterious effect of the resulting wildfires has been felt by many in recent years. Naturally, state governments have spent millions on cloud seeding in the hopes that the practice would promote rainfall and help quell these deadly eventualities. Unfortunately, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report, we’re really bad at controlling the weather, and it has probably been a huge waste of money, reports Gizmodo.
Cloud seeding is an 80-year-old practice for the promotion of rainfall, where airplanes fly up into the cloud layer and inject dry ice or silver iodide crystals to induce the water vapor to form ice crystals and fall into warmer air, ostensibly causing rain. Is cloud seeding actually causing more rain than would normally have fallen without the practice? According to the GAO report, the answer is basically a shrugging emoji.
Programs in California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are seeding clouds with state taxpayer dollars to apparently unknown effect. The federal government has dramatically slashed cloud seeding spending since the 1970s, and most efforts are now completed without federal support.
Cloud seeding may increase water availability and result in economic, environmental, and human health benefits. In the studies GAO reviewed, estimates of the additional precipitation ranged from 0 to 20 percent,” the report said. “However, it is difficult to evaluate the effects of cloud seeding due to limitations of effectiveness research.
That isn’t to say cloud seeding does nothing, but whatever it is accomplishing is both difficult to measure, and even harder to study.
Here’s more from Gizmodo:
The GAO report is a list of the limitations of the tech. Utah alone is dumping $12 million a year into seeding the clouds without too much to show for it. It’s hard to estimate how much it would have rained without cloud seeding, so there’s not a great way to make a control group for any study. It’s also hard to know how much the seeding affected rainfall in a specific area. Many previous studies of seed-based rainfall showed results that weren’t statistically significant.
Some studies dating back to the 1970s report that cloud seeding has been responsible for as little as three percent average increases in precipitation. A three percent variance of anything can’t be statistically concrete. The GAO called it “not statistically distinguishable from zero.” That’s a science way of saying cloud seeding is possibly doing fuck all to promote rainfall.
Modern advancements in radar and weather sensor technology have shown that cloud seeding may be effective, but only under extremely specific sets of circumstances. Many of these state-funded operations may just be throwing dollars away with no meaningful short-term rainfall effects. Perhaps there could be other, better, ways to spend that money to prevent wildfires and improve drought conditions for their residents.
