Rainfall enhancement. Hygroscopic cloud seeding
Rainfall enhancement. Hygroscopic cloud seeding
- provide food security;
- recharging underground water supply;
- hail suppression;
- economic security.
- With population constantly growing, natural water resources become more and more limited. In addition, droughts have been occurring more often as our planet warms and climate changes. For this reason, it is crucial to address water scarcity problems. Global research on cloud-seeding technology indicates that precipitation can be increased up to 15% of the annual norm, depending on the available cloud resources and technical systems used.
- According to various researches, 80% of cloud droplets are unable to reach the ground surface. One solution is hygroscopic cloud seeding, a common method in weather modification causing rain enhancement. Similar to glaciogenic cloud seeding, it is a process of dispersing particles (in this case NaCl) underneath the cloud base with the difference that hygroscopic agent is used in warm (liquid) clouds and glaciogenic agent (AgI) is used in supercool water clouds.
- There are two processes by which a cloud would initiate precipitation: 1) shifting from ice processes to condensation-coalescence mechanism, 2) enhancing the coalescence process.
- Once the seeding material is in the cloud, the salt particles stimulate the condensation process and enhance the collision-coalescence process, thereby widening the droplet size distribution and increasing the precipitation amount.
- The seeding agent can be distributed by aircraft as hygroscopic flares “Loza-1000” burn under (along) the convective cloud base. As the CCN are already in the updraft region of the cloud from where it ‘feeds’, the increasing nuclei reach the cloud top and then fall down, capturing the smaller water drops on their path.
- Benefits of precipitation enhancement:
- provide food security;
- recharging underground water supply;
- hail suppression;
- economic security.
