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Radars, snow gauges confirm seeding increases precipitation under certain conditions.
Scientists announced today that they have successfully used a combination of radars and snow gauges to measure the impact of cloud seeding on snowfall. The new research addresses decades of speculation about the effectiveness of artificial methods to increase precipitation, demonstrating unambiguously that cloud seeding can boost snowfall across a wide area if the atmospheric conditions are favorable.
“This is a revelation,” said Sarah Tessendorf, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and co-author of a new paper about the research. “We can definitely say that cloud seeding enhances snowfall under the right conditions.”
The researchers, including scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Wyoming, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, arrived at their results by analyzing detailed observations taken in a cloud seeding experiment in Idaho during the winter of 2017. They found that injecting clouds with silver iodide generated precipitation at multiple sites at the ground, sometimes creating snowfall where none had existed.
The study provides the most comprehensive evidence to date that cloud seeding can generate rain or snow.