Have you ever wondered whether, one day, human beings will be able to control the weather? Hmm. It seems like human beings are already altering the weather, as the planet is now warming up due to human pollution. But we don’t really have any control over the changes we are bringing about, and that is a big problem. But what if humans could control the weather? What if we could control when it rains and where, for instance? Well, it turns out that we may already have some control over this aspect of weather. How? The answer is the mysterious process of  “cloud seeding.” Yup, humans now have the technology they need to “seed” a cloud in the sky, so that clouds form, and ultimately rain, where they want them to. But the big question that scientists want to know is, now that they’ve invented the process, does it really work?

The first step to understanding how cloud seeding works is to learn a bit more about how clouds form. What are clouds really? Clouds are made up of millions of tiny water droplets, so small that they hang in the air. How do the water droplets get up in the air in the first place? As the Sun’s radiation warm the Earth, water bodies, such as oceans, lakes, and rivers, release water vapor (gaseous water) into the air. Plants lose water vapor to the air as well (this process is called transpiration). As the vapor rises through the air, it condenses (forms water again) around tiny particles of material that float in the air. You’d be surprise to learn how much material is floating in the air, not just due to human pollution (although there is a lot of that), but also due to natural causes, such as volcanic eruptions. There are enormous numbers of water droplets in the sky (waaaaaay too many to count). When these droplets come together, they form clouds. As the droplets become larger and heavier, they fall to the ground as rain.

So, how does cloud seeding work? Check out our next blog post for the scoop on the latest cloud seeding know-how!