Cloud Seeding
Cloud seeding is a common technique to enhance precipitation. Evidence on its safety is strong, but there are still doubts about its effectiveness. Cloud seeding entails spraying small particles (like silver iodide) onto clouds in order to affect their development, usually with the goal of increasing precipitation. Cloud seeding only works to the extent that there is already water vapor present in the air. Critics generally contend that claimed successes occur in conditions which were going to lead to rain anyway. It is used in a variety of drought-prone countries, including the United States, the People's Republic of China, India, and Russia. In the People's Republic of China there is a perceived dependency upon it in dry regions, and there is a strong suspicion it is used to "wash the air" in dry and heavily polluted places, such as Beijing. In mountainous areas of the United States such as the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, cloud seeding has been employed since the 1950s.
Read more about this topic: Weather Modification
Famous quotes containing the words cloud and/or seeding:
“On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose,
Tired of his dark dominion, swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,”
—George Meredith (1828–1909)
“Propaganda has a bad name, but its root meaning is simply to disseminate through a medium, and all writing therefore is propaganda for something. It’s a seeding of the self in the consciousness of others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)