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What happens inside a cloud?
Making Rain However, the processes that occur in clouds are extraordinarily complex and are interdependent. This makes it very difficult to determine the effect of changing one factor in the cloud. If you seed a cloud and it rains, does that mean you were successful? How do you know whether or not the cloud was going to produce rain in the first place?
Cloud seeding experiments have been conducted since the 1940's, but the evidence
for their success is sometimes inconclusive.
According to the
American Meteorological Society, there is
statistical
evidence that precipitation from clouds that develop over mountains has been
increased by about 10% through cloud seeding. Increasing snow pack in mountains
is a valuable endeavor because it will increase the amount of spring/summer
water runoff that will ultimately reach regions downstream of the mountains.
If you'd like to learn more about cloud seeding, check out these websites:
Making Rain However, the processes that occur in clouds are extraordinarily complex and are interdependent. This makes it very difficult to determine the effect of changing one factor in the cloud. If you seed a cloud and it rains, does that mean you were successful? How do you know whether or not the cloud was going to produce rain in the first place?
Cloud seeding experiments have been conducted since the 1940's, but the evidence
for their success is sometimes inconclusive.
According to the
American Meteorological Society, there is
statistical
evidence that precipitation from clouds that develop over mountains has been
increased by about 10% through cloud seeding. Increasing snow pack in mountains
is a valuable endeavor because it will increase the amount of spring/summer
water runoff that will ultimately reach regions downstream of the mountains.
If you'd like to learn more about cloud seeding, check out these websites:- Seeding Operations & Atmospheric Research
- Planned and Inadvertent Weather Modification, American Meteorological Society
- Colorado Water Conservation Board Cloud Seeding Information
