Manipulating Clouds

                  Manipulating Clouds

   People have trying to control the weather and the impact that the weather has on us all for a very long time. The earliest known measures known to have taken place in the forms of prayers and ceremonies. The most commonly known forms of ceremonies are by the Native Americans who preformed a ritual called a "rain dance".All over the world similar rituals have taken place.

  

   During the 20th century our understanding in cloud physics has advanced. Scientists started to bring to intentionally seed clouds meaning that they can stimulate the cloud to bring precipitation, clear fog, and reduce hailstone sizes.The U.S government had a project called "Project Storm Fury", which was intended to weaken the strength of a hurricane by disrupting the structure of the hurricane. During the 1962-1971 all hurricanes were seeded with a chemical called " Silver Iodine, but this experiment gave no great success. One thing this experiment did accomplish was it gave meteorologist more knowledge on hurricanes.

   Clouds are made up of water droplets and ice crystals growing on a nuclei. Cloud seeding is when scientist create more water droplets and ice crystals by introducing an artificial nuclei into the part of the cloud saturated with water vapor. This causes a greater chance of precipitation. 

  Cloud seeding advanced when the American scientist Vincent Schaefer discovered that seeding a cloud with small crystals made up of dry ice can serve the same purpose as the artificial nuclei does. This is because the extreme low temperatures of around -109F of the dry ice crystals attracts the water droplets rapidly, building up until they grow large enough to fall from the cloud as rain.

   Later the scientist Bernard Vonnegut discovered that the silver iodine crystals is another ideal substitute for a nuclei.Using silver iodine crystals along with dry ice crystals for seeding clouds, making it even more quicker results. These methods have been used since 1946.

  Cloud seeding air crafts hold tanks of propane that contain silver iodine.The silver iodine is released by the tanks burning off the propane. This releases the silver iodine into the atmosphere where is freezes into ice crystals. Sometimes called "chem-trails" or "chemical trails".