Cloud seeding: Pinpricking Nature with trial and error

Raju Korti
You just do not tinker with the Nature. It is simply what it is and not what it ought to be. For all its famed resilience, it has an uncanny knack of getting back at you hard, and though gradual, it can have disastrous -- or cataclysmic if you prefer -- consequences for the human race. The fact that Nature exists in all its myriad and multi-splendored forms, is as much dangerous as it is fascinating.

Cloud seeding process: Courtesy Wikipedia

In the guise of creativity and innovation, humans have been messing up with the genes and plants, and although most of us did not know that genes existed, we still had our brains figuring out that selective breeding could ensure that desirable traits would end up being prevalent in our crops and livestock. Tinkering with Nature, as in Environment, is a process that has started long back and it will be just a matter of time before its consequences are irreversible. One does not have to be a doomsday prophet to say this. The results are there to be seen. The cloud seeding experiment in Dubai is an example in point.

The Gulf country witnessed a downpour -- a luxury in a parched desert -- like it never did. There have been suggestions that the intense rains were triggered by cloud seeding, which is usually known to cause, at best, 25% extra rainfall. Cloud seeding, as it were, does not guarantee rains in the first place to the extent expected, but look at the magnitude of the havoc in Dubai (For Mumbai it is an annual phenomenon). The Nature returned with compound interest.

Nature is a universal force and can have far-reaching consequences in every sense of the word. Little wonder, experts are weighing in whether cloud seeding was the actual cause. A particularly remarkable perspective comes from Johan Jaques, a senior meteorologist at KISTERS, warning of "potential unintended consequences of meddling with weather patterns". The Newsweek quoted him as saying that its ramifications can also have a "diplomatic fallout" leading to weather wars. As if other unethical forms of warfare like the biological and chemical warfare were not enough.

Jaques explains that although cloud seeding aims to enhance and accelerate the precipitation process -- especially in areas which have seen very less rains, there is always the threat of excessive precipitation that can lead to excess infiltration flow with potential flash floods as result. He believes that the Dubai floods act as a stark warning of the unintended consequences we can unleash when we use such technology to alter the weather. For the record, there is no concrete evidence linking the Dubai rains to cloud seeding but the common chord is the tampering with natural weather process. As a student of Climate Physics, a curriculum I relentlessly suggest to be taught in universities, I am inclined to agree with his views.

Mr Jaques makes an irrefutable argument that anytime we interfere with natural precipitation patterns we set off a chain of events over which we have little control and "if we are not careful, unrestrained use of this technology could end up causing diplomatic instabilities with neighbouring countries engaging in tit-for-tat weather wars." Nature does not recognize international borders.

Cloud seeding is a costly experiment with no lucrative returns. In a country like India where budgets struggle to meet populist and genuine needs, such steps are not even considered expedient. It costs almost Rs 1 lakh for every square km of cloud and involves spraying of salt mixtures in clouds from the air that would result in condensation of the cloud and eventually case rainfall. A fringe benefit comes as it also washes away pollutants in the atmosphere. Just like the natural rainfall that cleanses the air. Last December, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had mulled artificial rains as a solution to tackle air pollution -- a robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul solution. You tamper with the Nature to cause pollution and you also tamper with it to correct it. How self-defeating is that? There is more pain and less gain!

The more man tries to exercise his control over the Nature, the more vengeance with which it bounces back. It is a complex algorithm which remains uncracked yet and your options as a researcher or a scientist remain restricted to studying patterns that are by no means fully conclusive. The very esoteric characteristic of Nature is to keep the trump card to itself and sometimes, it does not know itself when it will unleash it. You intrude/encroach upon one of its many parameters and you disturb the entire equation that has many imponderable unknowns whose value cannot be deduced correctly.

Humans will do a lot of damage, some irretrievable, before we ultimately destroy ourselves. In our infinite wisdom, we fail to discern that life will continue without humans. New forms of intelligence will emerge long after human experiments are over. And then who will remain to experiment what?