Weather modification has been happening for decades. Does it work?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wants to ban weather modification in the United States, so she hosted a hearing on the subject that included conspiracy theories and true stories that are so wild they’re hard to believe. The hearing made two things clear — modern weather modification has been happening for decades, and we know very little about the impacts.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s weather conspiracies
The hearing included genuine concerns about the unknowns of weather modification on the environment.
It’s also important to know that the person who hosted it, Rep. Greene, has spread conspiracy theories about weather modification in the past, like claiming California wildfires were purposefully lit using space lasers.
This summer, conspiracies were circulating that the Texas floods were caused by cloud seeding.
Despite the falsehoods, it’s true that scientists have been using modern technology in an attempt to control the weather for decades.
Project Cirrus 1947
Project Cirrus is the first known attempt to modify a hurricane. In 1947, a crew aboard an Air Force B-17 bomber tried to modify a tropical cyclone by dropping crushed dry ice into the storm. It was done after GE discovered precipitation and clouds could potentially be altered by introducing dry ice into an area with supercooled water.
They conducted the test after the storm crossed over Florida and went out to sea. After the test, the storm took a 135-degree turn and went back over South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.
The head of GE laboratories said he was 99% sure the storm had changed course due to the seeding. Lawsuits were filed and then dismissed after what was then called the Weather Bureau discovered storms could turn without seeding.
Does weather modification work?
Meteorologists who testified said there’s not enough scientific evidence to know if weather modification works. It’s done at a small scale, so it’s not clear that it’s viable.
One panelist said humans don’t have the power to alter major storms.
“Research has made clear that changing a major specific event, a hurricane or a drenching rain or a drought, is just beyond human capabilities,” Dr. Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs at the Climate Institute, said. “That’s not what’s happening. Nature has so much energy.”
The unknowns of cloud seeding and solar radiation modification
One of the main forms of weather modification is cloud seeding, which is the practice of adding tiny particles, like silver iodide, into clouds to trigger rain and snow.
Government data reveals scientists don’t know much about the effects.
According to the Government Accountability Office, cloud seeding can increase localized precipitation anywhere from 0% to 20%. The GAO adds, however, it’s difficult to evaluate the effects due to research limitations.
Specifically, the GAO said the use of silver iodide for cloud seeding does not pose an environmental risk or health concern at current levels. But the office admits it does not know whether it would have an effect on public health or the environment if it became more widespread.
“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. However, it is difficult to evaluate the effects of cloud seeding due to limitations of research,” a study from the GAO stated.
The EPA has said that unintended consequences of weather modification could include reduced crop yields, changes in plant and animal life, ozone depletion and harm to human health.
“Some scientists think they can predict and control the impact of geoengineering, but even the best scientific models will never be able to capture all of God’s wonderful creation and nature’s mysteries,” Greene said. “So we can predict the real impacts these global-scale interventions would have little better than the Native Americans could know the impact of their rain dances.”
Greene also expressed concerns about solar radiation modification, the practice of putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect incoming sunlight. It’s done with the intent of cooling the planet but it’s not clear it works.
“It’s worth asking, what if scientists could somehow manage to create a temperature dial that could be rotated to reliably set the global climate, who would control the dial?” Greene said.
Greene introduced legislation to ban weather modification in the United States.
The present and future of weather modification
Currently, Florida and Tennessee have prohibitions on weather modification, and four states are working on bills that would ban it. Nine states have active cloud seeding programs: California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
The meteorologists at the hearing gave a couple of recommendations for climate policy. First, they said the federal government needs to pass laws regarding weather modification. They said these laws would create uniformity across all 50 states. Second, the U.S. should lead international talks with the goal of banning solar geoengineering worldwide.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
