By Doyle Rice – USA TODAY
Excerpt:
A new study appearing in the peer-reviewed science journal PLOS Water on June 24 suggests that cloud seeding could eventually allow humans to disrupt or steer natural disasters, like hurricanes.
If that sounds like far-fetched science fiction, some scientists would agree with you. But study authors say current strategies to help tame weather disasters may not be suitable.
“The growing impact of weather extremes on society highlights that traditional approaches such as dams, levees, and insurance alone may not be sufficient to address the widespread consequences of these hazards,” the authors say.
Their proposed solution: Use existing technology (often used to extract rain from clouds), and supercharge it with high-tech data and analysis. Done correctly, humans might be able to disrupt huge weather systems and protect densely populated areas.
In the study, scientists suggested that small, carefully-timed cloud seeding operations applied days before the peak of an extreme weather event could have shifted the track of Superstorm Sandy in 2012 by about 300 miles to miss New York City, raised the low temperature of the 2021 Texas freeze by about 18 degrees Fahrenheit and reduced the amount of precipitation carried by a 2022 atmospheric river that caused flooding in California by about 5%.
Critics say it’s a far-fetched idea with little proof.
…
