Weather dominates everything in human life, where we live, what we eat, what we wear and even what we mean. Our ancestors saw in the weather, the hand of divine beings who controlled to will our existence. In the seventies, forecasters began to tell us that humanity was sitting on the remote, pressing, without knowing it, the buttons on the Earth's climate. The science of weather modification allowed us to achieve this control and slowly began to realize what they are some buttons. The challenge now is whether we see programs that are suitable for us.
continually speak of the weather, if it is hot, if it's cold if it rains too much or too little. Faced with an uncomfortable silence in the elevator is the most useful of the issues. For many, talking is a waste of time and prefer to do something with the weather. Control is weather or climate change conscious application of technologies to achieve the change of weather conducive to human activity or comfort. This is opposite to the concept of climate change where changes in environmental conditions due to the impact of civilization on the Earth's environment.
According to Roelof T. Bruintjes, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Researh in Colorado USA, currently available technologies for climate control are closely linked to water resource management and in some cases to smooth out climatic disasters. In
Annual registrations issued by the Weather Modification Organization, an American group led to research and dissemination of these technologies, 24 countries reported conducting over one thousand projects to weather modification. Bruintjes notes that these figures relate only to the countries that report such data and that at least 10 other countries are experimenting without giving them information.
In a paper presented by TP DeFelice on Climate Change Conference 2005, explains that many contemporary socio-economic problems due to lack of availability of water and warns that by 2020 more than 40% of the world's population live in areas with shortages of this fluid, where the technologies for climate control can be applied successfully to facilitate the water cycle.
Such is the social and political importance of the matter in 2006, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson appeared before the U.S. Congress a bill to create the National Council for the Operation and Climatological Modification Research. This reinforces the recommendation made in 2003 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to conduct a sustained research effort aimed at modifying the climate.
With 60 years of existence, the science of control climate is still in its infancy and the results are causing heated debate in the scientific community. But the fact that in the years ahead will require more reliable tool than a knife on the ground or a novena to San Isidro Labrador to achieve the perfect climate.
it rain, rain, the virgin of the cave
In 1946, Vincent Schaefer, a researcher at General Electric, began the science of climate change when, armed with his theories and a kilo of powdered dry ice , flew into a cloud in the skies of Massachusetts to empty their cargo
it
Along with other researchers at GE, Schaefer had been studying the physical processes that take place inside the clouds for rain or not. The experiment sought to prove that the ice particles were able to cause condensation of moisture in the cloud to act as nuclei for the formation of larger ice crystals that precipitate its weight on the ground as rain or snow depending on temperature. Later that year, another researcher, Bernard Vonnegut replaced by dry ice silver iodide, a salt with high capacity to absorb moisture and it takes a better effect. While the technique aroused the skepticism of many forecasters, by the early fifties to 10 percent of American skies were "planted" by commercial companies who offer their services to make it rain.
proposals and the results prompted the U.S. government's interest and for the next 30 years the U.S. government spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research projects that could increase the rain, to minimize crop damage from hail and fog on lower airports.
The larger project of cloud seeding was developed by scientists at NCAR in the states of Coahuila to try to end the drought that struck the state in the early nineties. Of all the missions launched, 99 of them were able to increase 40% of precipitation, according to project coordinator Brant Foote.
60 years later, the cloud seeding technique glacigenic products such as dry ice or silver iodide is the most accepted and used in the science of climate control. The scientific community recognizes that this technique is able to increase by 10% the amount of precipitation reaching the ground (compared to the result of natural processes) when the seed is done under favorable weather conditions, says the document TP DeFelice.
How to tame a hurricane
Each year in the hurricane season, huge storms with winds over at 120 miles per hour travel the world's oceans. When they strike populated areas, killing thousands of people and damaging property, they reach the billions of dollars and nothing, absolutely nothing can stand in his way. Apply
weather modification technology to dissipate hurricanes or try to control its direction is still under investigation and some proposals fall into the realm of speculation. However, there is a long history of attempts, some of which have been successful at least partially.
Stormfury (fury of storm) developed between 1961 and 1971 by the U.S. Navy and service Federal weather was one of the most ambitious projects to control hurricanes. The project sought to dissolve the hurricanes before they hit American shores. For this daring missions were sent to seed silver iodide walls of the storm. Under the plan, the rain had increased the wind weakens. The first four missions reported a decline of between 10 and 30 percent in wind speed. However, the following four missions can not achieve the objective it was decided to complete the project.
Another interesting proposal was submitted by Ross N. Hoffman, a renowned meteorologist and vice president of an environmental consulting firm in Scientific American. Hoffman says it's possible to tame hurricanes or at least divert them from the big cities, in fact he has already accomplished ... virtually. In computer simulations Hoffman experimented with Hurricanes Andrew and Iniki, the strongest in 1992 and managed to divert the storm 60 miles virtual two-degree rise in temperature of updrafts in the center of the hurricane. The big problem is that currently there are no technologies that achieve this end. Hoffman envisions a future satellites capable of collecting solar energy and transform it into a microwave beam. The idea in the style of James Bond films, is to shoot from a ray satellites Storm scope and increase its internal temperature to alter its course. Damian R.
Wilson, a meteorologist with the British weather service, thinks it has found a way to drown out the cyclone. The source of energy for these storms is the humidity and heat taken from the sea surface and ground into hurricanes fade as they lose this energy input. Wilson's proposal is to mimic these conditions by coating the surface of the ocean with a thin film of biodegradable oil.
The idea is also driven by a group of researchers from the Massachusetts Technological Institute. The investigators who coordinates think that covering the ocean with a layer as only one molecule thick is sufficient to drown a storm like that. The problem is that the layer breaks Olajos creating holes through which the storm can breathe. "We need to find an oil that can repair itself quickly once the wave," said Moshe Alamaro, a team member. The Chevron oil company has been interested in the project by providing various types of oils and funds for research. Sure
posts to imagine "no shortage of suggestions," says Hoffman, There are proposals ranging from using nuclear bombs to cool the ocean dragging icebergs from the polar to tropical seas.
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