Weather-Making: Thunderstorms In Place of Desalinators

The Metro System scientists used ionisers to produce negatively charged particles ....

They have a natural tendency to attach to tiny specks of dust which are ever-present in the atmosphere in the desert-regions.

These are then carried up from the emitters by convection - upward currents of air generated by the heat release from sunlight as it hits the ground.

Once the dust particles reach the right height for cloud formation, the charges will attract water molecules floating in the air which then start to condense around them.

If there is sufficient moisture in the air, it induces billions of droplets to form which finally means cloud and rain. _DailyMail

DailyMail
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology have been fiddling with Abu Dhabi's weather. Using the negative-ion generators pictured above, the scientists have been successful in creating rainfal and thunderstorms in the Arabian summer months of July and August -- when rain rarely falls naturally.

Last June Metro Systems built five ionising sites each with 20 emitters which can send trillions of cloud-forming ions into the atmosphere.

Over four summer months the emitters were switched on when the required atmospheric level of humidity reached 30 per cent or more.

While the country's weather experts predicted no clouds or rain in the Al Ain region, rain fell on FIFTY-TWO occasions.

The project was monitored by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world's major centres for atmospheric physics.

Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute director, said: There are many applications. One is getting water into a dry area.

'Maybe this is a most important point for mankind.'

...Building an ionising system is about £7 million while a desalination plant would be £850 million and costs a lot more to run.

Some scientists are treating the results in Al Ain with caution because Abu Dhabi is a coastal state and can experience natural summer rainfall triggered by air picking up moisture from the warm ocean before dropping it on land.

But the number of times it rained in the region so soon after the ionisers were switched on has encouraged researchers.

Professor Peter Wilderer witnessed the experiments first hand and is backing the breakthrough. _DailyMail

Local and regional control of weather and climate has long been a goal of visionaries and utopians. An entire arsenal of weather devices will be needed, for dealing with the extremes of any season. In this case, the ability to trigger rainfall can substitute for more expensive desalination plants -- for freshwater. In other situations, seasonal weather might be modified to create ideal growing seasons for highly valued crops.

In this modern age of global warming cooling climate change, it's best to be prepared for anything.