A few days ago I read about artificial rains being developed by scientists. Anyone got any idea how this is done?
Similarly I heard a news last year that Russian Air force now have the capability of making artificial rains. How is it possible? Anyone got any technical detail about it?
MGR, the actor-CM of Tamilnadu was a remarkable person. He tried all sorts of outlandish schemes. Harvesting Ocean Thermal Power, recharging ground water level by pumping rain water into the ground through bore wells during heavy rains and creating rain by cloud seeding with Silver Chloride smoke were a few of his pet projects. The rain is natural. In the sense that it is water available in the atmosphere that gets precipitated. The water is not created from the elements. Unless there is available moisture the idea will not work. What is being done is to provide nucleation sites, which is a well known chem., eng., process for condensation. Bioramani
i dont think it would work for cooling the climate though... even if the rain cools the earth, the heat generated when producting such rain would outweigh its cooling affect, according to thermodynamics. Best Forex Indicator
Some years ago (not more than 3) I read an article which said that one innovator has found a very cheap and simple method for artificial raining. It works mostly on periphery of Western Ghats on East side, the region is called "rain shadow" as monsoon clouds empty water on west side of Ghats and so this east side remain rain-less.The innovator used large sheet metal box with dimensions of 4ftx4ftx2ft high. The box had grill on bottom and open on top. Fire-logs or dry wood pieces found rural area are filled in the box along with furnace coal. The fire is started with small amount of kerosene and 2-3 hand blowers are worked by people to blow the fire. Once the logs are lighted properly coal also get lit well good fire sends flames high. The aim is to achieve temperature of 800 degrees centigrade at which the common salt evaporates. some 10-15kg common salt is kept on standby and when flames start real good salt is sprinkled in fire evenly and again more logs are added and air blown by hand blowers. This furnace carries the salt vapour up about 80ft or more and then aided by thermal currents and reaches the clouds about 1km up. As soon as salt vapour strikes clouds it absorbs moisture and coalesce into droplets which seed the rain. The experiment were 80% successful and expense on each trial was about Rs.8000/-. I have been not able to find that article in Google. So if anybody has found please send me link or reference.
I did come across a rather similar trial by the Met Dept of India while studying in Andhra 'Varsity in the late 50s. The work apparently started in Maharashtra. All that was done was to have a small steam generator continuously leaking a small jet of steam non stop 24 x 7 at a single location. The idea was that the thermal syphon set up by this will carry dust particles in the atmosphere into clouds, nucleate and increase precipitation. The scientist concerned showed me statistical data that showed annual rain fall in the places where this was done was significantly more than if it was not done. The Met scientist did this wherever he was posted. Unfortunately this was never tried on a large scale. There is nothing wrong in the concept. All artificial rain making consists of creating nucleation sites for condensation. It is irrelevant how the nuclei are delivered into the clouds. However, there is no escape from the primary requirement of dark clouds being available for seeding. Sad that promising leads peter out for want of political will. If this was the case in 1957, no wonder nothing happens now.
This I have already read on Google. But the expenditure is not so huge as $11million. It costs just maximum Rs.8000 for woodlogs and hard coal. No electricity required. It is transported to place where clouds gather but no rains.
Read an article on How is artificial rain produced. I think there are many ways involved in producing Artificial rain. Two ideas are explained very well in this article.
