By Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Scientists, including one from the University of Illinois, have for the first time been able to quantify the effects of seeding clouds with silver iodide to produce more snow using sophisticated radar technology.
Cloud seeding has been going on for 60 years, said Bob Rauber, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois.
“Cloud seeding is done every year in California,” Rauber said. “It’s done every year in Utah along the mountains of Utah, along the Sierra Nevada in California, it’s done in Idaho. Basically done in a lot of places where it’s dry conditions.”
Rauber was part of a study with researchers from universities in Colorado and Wyoming. They worked with Idaho Power, which Rauber said had been cloud seeding winter storms for years to turn cold water clouds into mountain snow reserves.
“Now there have been studies that have been done that have done this statically over long periods and estimated how much snow might have been created, but this is the first time it’s been observed directly,” Rauber said.
After decades of inconclusive studies, Rauber said the difference this time was technology.
“We have airplanes now with radars on them that can see things that we could never see before,” Rauber said. “We have radars that operate at much higher power and frequency that we can see things we couldn’t’ see before.”
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Rauber said the authors showed three snowstorms seeded by Idaho Power produced more than 280 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water in the form of snow. The study could boost cloud seeding efforts to increase water resources.
“Farmers need it, power companies need it, municipalities need it,” Rauber said.
The published study only examines data from three storms, but Rauber said there were 24 storms that occurred with cloud seeding in Idaho last year they collected data from, so there is a lot more data to analyze. He said he wants to secure more funding for the research.
Cloud seeding with silver iodide, Rauber said, is done in small quantities of microscopic particles and is difficult to find in chemical analysis of the snow. He said it was not toxic.
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