Weather-modification: Prospects and Retrospect

On November 13, 1946, pilot Curtis Talbot, working for the General Electric Research Laboratory, climbed to an altitude of 14,000 feet about 30 miles east of Schenectady, New York. Talbot, along with scientist Dr. Vincent J. Schaefer, released three pounds of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) into the clouds. As they turned south, Dr. Schaefer noted, “I looked toward the rear and was thrilled to see long streamers of snow falling from the base of the cloud through which we had just passed. (Please see figure below). I shouted to Curt to swing around, and as we did so we passed through a mass of glistening snow crystals! Needless to say, “we were quite excited.”

They had created the world’s first human-made snowstorm. There was a feeling that humanity might finally be able to control one of the greatest. variables of life on earth. And, as the Cold War tensions heightened, weather control was seen by the United States as a potential weapon that could be even more devastating than nuclear warfare, (that is how it was started).

Hi readers! Just recall the earlier blog “weather modification: a force multiplier: a paper published in 1996.

Let’s have another phrase from another paper.

This paper described that,

Appropriate application of weather modification can provide battle space dominance to a degree never imagined. In future, such operations will enhance air and space superiority and provide new options for battle space shaping and battle space awareness. “The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it all together”.

Said, General Gordon R. Sullivan, “Moving into the 21st Century: America’s Army and Modernization,” Military Review (July 1993) quoted in Mary Ann Seagraves and Richard Szymber, “Weather a Force Multiplier”, Military Review, November/December 1995.

Remember the paper “Weather a Force Multiplier” was presented before US Air Force where weather modification was viewed as part of the National security policy with both national and international application.

Forces in the United States were of the opinion and rightly so that,

It will become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending upon its interests, at various levels. (Please remember my words),

Anyone who think that what the paper described in 1996 is not today’s reality, better update your knowledge.

The major thinking behind this endeavor was that a global, precise, real-time, robust, and systematic weather-modification capability that would provide to the war-fighting “Commander IN Chief” of a unified Command (CINC) with a powerful force to achieve military objectives using weather modification as a force multiplier who’s modification capability would be universally applicable especially across the entire spectrum of the conflict. Modification of weather even on a small scale would change it from a force degrader to a force multiplier.

No rational person could object to this because every individual and/or country possess a fundamental right to protect their country, people and their strategic interest.

If we don’t have the ability/capacity/ vision (better borrow) to save our interest we have no body to blame but ourselves

Now the question is how the weather is being modified?

To get the exact answer please read

“The Life and Times of US Weather: What Can We Do About It”? written by William B. Meyer, American Heritage 37, no. 4 (June/July 1986), where in the president’s advisory committee on weather control recognized the military potential of weather-modification and explicitly warn in the report of 1957 that,

“it could become more potent weapon than the atom bomb”.

Since 1969, weather-modification has been considered as alteration of weather phenomena over a limited area for a limited period (please read An Introduction to Weather-modification written by Scott AFB, Ill: Air Weather Service/MAC, September 1969).

It can be divided into two categories: suppression and intensification of weather patterns. In extreme cases, it might involve the creation of completely new weather patterns, weakening or control of severe storms, or even

alteration of global climate on a far-reaching and/or long-lasting scale.

Extreme and controversial examples of weather modification include creation of made-to-order weather, large-scale climate modification, creation, and control and/or “steering” severe storms, etc. All these facets have been extensively researched, have been technically proven and potentially feasible.

Applying Weather-modification to Military Operations
This was proposed to be done by the Weather Force Support Element (WFSE), responsible to support CINCs with weather-modification options. The WFSE could operate anywhere if it has access to the GWN (Ground Wave Network) towers and the required system components.

With the CINC’s intent as guidance, the WFSE will formulate weather modification options using information provided by the GWN, local weather data network, and weather-modification forecast model. The options would include range of effect, probability of success, resources to be expended, the enemy’s vulnerability, and the risks involved. The CINC chooses an effect based on these inputs, and the WFSE will implements the chosen course, selecting the right modification tools and employing them to achieve the desired effect. Sensors detect the change and feed data on the new weather pattern to the modelling system which updates its forecast accordingly. The WFSE checks the effectiveness of its efforts by pulling down the updated current conditions and new forecast(s) from the GWN and local weather data network, and plans follow-on missions as needed.

Two key technologies are necessary to blend an integrated, comprehensive, responsive, precise, and effective weather-modification system. Advances in the science of chaos which is a branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamic systems and irregularities and the ability to model the extremely complex nonlinear system of global weather in ways that can accurately predict the outcome of changes in the influencing variables.

Advances in these two areas can make it feasible to affect regional weather patterns by making small but continuous pushes to one or more influencing factors. With enough principal time and the right conditions, it is possible to get “made-to-order” weather said, William Brown in “Mathematicians Learn How to Tame Chaos”, New Scientist (30^th  May 1992): 16.

The essential ingredient of the weather-modification system would include the methodologies of infusing either energy or chemicals into the meteorological process in the right way, at the right place and time.

Infusing Energy

For example, “Weather-modification by Carbon Dust Absorption of Solar Energy,”  (please read Journal of Applied Meteorology 15 1976: 355). The study ultimately found that this technology could be used to enhance rainfall on the mesoscale (medium size or between microscale and macroscale), generate cirrus clouds (short, detached, hair-like clouds found at high altitudes), and enhance cumulonimbus (menacing looking multi-level clouds, extending high into the sky in towers or plumes) or thunder storm clouds in otherwise dry areas.

Precipitation

Numerous dispersal techniques of carbon dust have been studied, but the most convenient, safe, and cost-effective method is the use of afterburner (auxiliary burner in which extra fuel is burned in the exhaust of a jet engine, to increase pushes) type jet engines to generate carbon particles while flying through the targeted air. This method is based on injection of liquid hydrocarbon fuel into the auxiliary burner’s combustion gases. Extensive work has been done on UAVs (Unmanned Aviation Vehicles) which can closely match the capabilities of piloted aircraft. Upon combing this technology with stealth and carbon dust technologies, the result could be a UAV aircraft invisible to radar while en-route to the targeted area, which could spontaneously create carbon dust in any location. If clouds were seeded before their downpour at the desired location, precipitation can be suppressed. Meaning thereby, that precipitation could be “forced” to fall before its arrival in the desired territory, leaving it “dry.”

Storms

A tropical storm has an energy equivalent of 600 terawatts of energy, one forth as wind; the remaining in the form of heat stored and released as water vapor condenses into rain. According to Louis J. Battan, Garden City, N.Y., 1960 (Harvesting the Clouds), a tropical storm can have energy equal to 10,000 hydrogen bombs of  one-megaton each while at any instant, there are approximately 2,000 thunderstorms taking place. In fact, 45,000 thunderstorms containing heavy rain, hailstorm, microbursts, wind shear, and lightning are form daily [Gene S. Stuart, “Whirlwinds and Thunderbolts,” Nature on the Rampage (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1986),130].

There exist weather-modification technologies that can increase latent heat release in the atmosphere thereby providing additional water vapor for cloud cell development, and provide additional surface and heating of lower atmosphere to increase atmospheric instability. Such an unstable atmosphere can generate cloud and eventually storm cells development.

Conclusion

US forces are of the view that “Weather-modification is a force multiplier” with tremendous power that could be exploited across the full spectrum of war-fighting environments but, while offensive weather-modification efforts would certainly be undertaken with great caution and fear, it is clear that we cannot afford to allow an adversary to obtain an exclusive weather-modification capability.

That’s all for now dear readers.

More next week with “when the biggest US adversary: China started weather modification”?.

Till then, take care,

Bye