Another added: 'Absolutely nothing natural about the rainfall in the past 5 months. The 2022 eastern Australia floods were one of the nation's worst recorded flood disasters with a series of floods that occurred from February to April in South East Queensland, the Wide Bay-Burnett and parts of coastal New South Wales. Cloud seeding has strict requirements. Resources: https: . Electric vehicles have been available for decades. Silver iodide helps rain drops and ice crystals grow larger and increases the amount of rain and snow that can fall from clouds. You can find out more about Snowy Hydros cloud seeding operations here. We wont run out of key ingredients for climate action, but mining comes with social and environmental ramifications. . There's no evidence to suggest it played a role in the 2022 floods in southeastern Australia, either. that happened throughout February and March in Queensland and New South Wales, leading to more than a dozen deaths. In the U.S., studies have found a few percentage points of increase in precipitation. The Queensland capitals mayor, Adrian Schrinner, says there is a rain bomb over the city. Laurel: Although cloud seeding has been around for decades, how does today's technology move it toward a greater success rate? Commonly called "chemtrails" this "cloud seeding" is picking up in pace. 'Cloud seeding is being used to increase rainfall by corrupt governments to act on mother nature. one follower wrote. But a probe by the Tasmanian government into the 2016 flooding has since been completed, and investigators and expert atmospheric scientists found that cloud seeding by Hydro Tasmania, a government-owned generator of renewable energy, did not contribute to or worsen the heavy rains. Could you explain in more detail how cloud seeding works? To be successful, scientists need the right air temperature, the right humidity, a surface that attracts water and keeps it, and then the correct size material to allow condensation to form on the particle. Artist depiction of cloud seeding drones. Cloud seeding experiments began in Australia in 1947, shortly after the classic experiments of Schaefer (1946) in America showing that pellets of dry ice could rapidly glaciate a laboratory cloud. Australia's path towards Agenda 2030. Dr. Zou: As we know, the global water shortage has continuously intensified by rapid population growth and economic development around the world. The term 'rain bomb' was coined by Daily Mail Australia in 2017 to describe sudden and intense rainstorms, and has since been picked up by politicians and even the Bureau of Meteorology. Everything from wind speed, air movement and updraft, or a current of rising air, can affect a storms strength, Tessendorf said. This stored water can help ensure renewable energy generation and downstream water availability during future drier years, when inflows are lower. Others pointed to terms used in media coverage as proof the floods were part of an 'attack' and not natural. Dr. Zou's research interests include applying nanotechnology and membrane science to the development of low energy and high efficiency novel desalination and water purification solutions. Snowy Hydro also has other criteria for cloud seeding which includes; In addition to these atmospheric conditions, Snowy Hydro also takes into account the amount of water already in the landscape. Atmospheric water is one such alternative resource. The unsubstantiated claims have been spreading at a concerning rate on social media, with thousands seemingly convinced the record rain in northern NSW and Queensland are a 'man made' phenomenon. The more people who know about this bulls**t the better.'. more time. Cloud condensation nuclei can be introduced into the atmosphere naturally or artificially. There are up to 15,000 homes flooded in the city, with 1,544 people in evacuation centres in the south-east. And two Middle East rivals - the United . But conspiracy theorists aren't buying it. Laurel Ruma: From MIT Technology Review, I'm Laurel Ruma, and this is Business Lab. In just four days, the equivalent of eight months' worth of rain fell, paralysing certain areas of Australia's largest city. Australia 05:57 31 Mar 2022 . They vary in size. Silver Iodide is safe to use in cloud seeding operations because it is found naturally in the atmosphere, soil and sediments of the Snowy Mountains region. As the water spreads to northern New South Wales, how did the so-called rain bomb develop? If we had started where we started from in 2011 we would be in serious trouble.. It's very promising to know more about the effects of this seeding material. Social media users are sharing a news clip from 2016 about cloud seeding the day before a severe flood in Southern Tasmania. The flight lasted an hour and 34 minutes over the Upper Derwent catchment, targeting Lake Echo. Satisfactory evidence in relation to this might be a flight path, combined with evidence of a permit or . On Tuesday morning evacuation orders are issued for South Ballina. QLD Premier's father runs genetic data storage company. Cloud seeding involves modifying a cloud's structure to increase the chance of precipitation. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. Cloud seeding is used in parts of Australia to enhance rain, snowfall and water security. Laurel: This is very critical because the cloud seeding materials go very high up into the atmosphere where it is very cold, correct? The higher you move up to the atmosphere, quickly moving into subzero and very cold. Through the advancement in nanotechnology and nanoscience, nowadays we are working to design and engineer cloud seeding materials with optimal properties to ensure water vapor condensation will occur effectively and maximize the rainfall achieved. This podcast is produced in partnership with the UAE Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai. . Leverage advanced weather intelligence and decisioning tools for your enterprise business. Staggering snowfall in California mountains leaves residents trapped for days, SpaceX launches new crew to space station, Prosecution wraps case at Alex Murdaugh murder trial, White House cybersecurity strategy pivots to regulation, Explosive found in checked luggage at Pennsylvania airport, feds say, Rape kits from two women lead to arrest in 1979 murder of one of them, FDA authorizes first at-home test for both COVID and flu, Couple accuses fertility clinic of implanting embryo with cancer genes, Several hospitalized after Lufthansa flight diverted to Dulles due to turbulence. [4] [5] The floods' damage was significant because rain fell on . The analysis, which was also supported by the governments independent review, found that based on data collected by the aircrafts instruments and data from the Bureau of Meteorology, the cloud being seeded was already precipitating and contained significant amounts of ice, so efforts to initiate additional precipitation had no effect. We only operate aircraft fitted with cameras for aerial photography survey purposes and we are not sure where this misinformation has started, Handel Aviation posted on its website, adding, our recent flights over flooded areas of NSW and QLD are in response to the floods. In Australia, water can be a scarce commodity, with variousareas of the country suffering through prolonged droughts at times. Siems, a professor who leads a Monash University team studying clouds and precipitation, said the practice is not conducted in the Northern Rivers region and it cannot cause flooding. We were founded in 1899 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and you can find us in print on the web and at events each year around the world. Scientists blame intense rainfall on a combination of factors - but, on social media, unfounded allegations of "weather manipulation" have spread widely. At the moment, I'm working collaboratively on a project to evaluate the effects of these materials in the open air. And why has Queenslands capital flooded again just 11 years after the devastation of 2011? concerns about cloud seeding were raised in relation to the 2022 Lismore and South-East Queensland floods. To achieve this, we use the nanotechnology to deposit titanium dioxide nanoparticles as a shell layer and sodium chloride crystal core. Silver iodide is an ice-forming agent, which causes supercooled water droplets to freeze in the clouds. 4m ago. We can do a spectrum analysis and to find out their vapor condensation, the droplet formation, and the size and the number of the droplets. Cloud seeding is usually carried out by sprinkling particles from a plane. China, which already artificially alters its weather over major cities, plans to be able to modify weather over half its territory by 2025, to the alarm of neighbours including India. Source: Snowy Hydro. Were having trouble saving your preferences. THE FACTS: There's no evidence to suggest that cloud seeding played a role in either flood, and an atmospheric research expert told the AP that cloud seeding would . The government can also provide flood insurance for the people. Adkins said the crew involved in the seeding reported some effect . Mar 27, 2022 Cloud Seeding, . Top Stories. At 10pm, Seqwater starts to release some of the water building up in Wivenhoe Dam. Dr. Zou: Yes. Social media users are also sharing a separate example to baselessly claim that cloud seeding played a role in. Social media users are also sharing a separate example to baselessly claim that cloud seeding played a role in flooding that happened throughout February and March in Queensland and New South Wales, leading to more than a dozen deaths. For more information about us and the show, please check out our website at technologyreview.com. Figure 1: The area which is primarily targeted for increased precipitation from cloud seeding operations is shown in red (approximately 2110 km). On March 30, 2022, BBC News reported that thousands of people had to evacuate their homes due to a severe flood on the east coast of Australia. "They needed a shoulder to cry on and hear their story. 2022 . We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Twitter users are sharing a clip from a 2016 news broadcast about flooding in Tasmania to claim it proves that cloud seeding provoked the heavy rainfall. In their place, colder waters come up to the surface. The tiny vapors rise into the atmosphere without condensation nuclei, which are small particles. Cloud seeding is a form of weather modification that has been around since the 1960s, and has been used repeatedly in some places, like Wyoming and Colorado. This is done by firing small particles (usually silver iodide) into clouds . Of these four experiments, the Snowy Mountains saw statistically significant increases in rainfall during the experiment. Sydney An Australian aviation company says it has received more than 100 threats following an online conspiracy theory that its pilots unleashed a flooding disaster by cloud seeding. They are made of many super cooled water vapors, so although they are below zero, they remain as vapor. The fact that the damage and loss of life were so great this time is due to the fact that many more people live in . This temperature is much higher than most other known ice nucleate material. Under NSW legislation, Snowy Hydro can only cloud seed when precipitation is likely to fall as snow to elevations below 1,400 metres. That hasn't stopped some TikTok users from denouncing "weather engineering". The post's caption states, "There were no flood warnings for the area in Tasmania targeted by a cloud-seeding operation the day before floods devastated the town of Ouse." Archives of Handel Aviations website dating back to 2008 show that cloud seeding services have never been mentioned or offered on its site and there is no evidence that the company has been involved with the process. Ouse in the Derwent River catchment was one of the hardest hit areas in this week's floods. According to some laboratory studies, a high concentration of AgI can affect smaller organisms like algae and bacteria when applied consistently over a long period of time. You took this on as part of your research. Property damage. Get in touch. A Facebook post with over 23K views asserts this claim with footage from a news broadcast about cloud seeding before a severe flood in Southern Tasmania. Australia's 2022 floods have seen Brisbane's Southbank hit by a 'rain bomb'. The pilot's aviation company said it was conducting aerial surveys for a . Read about our approach to external linking. upcoming events, and more. Cloud seeding was conducted a day before the recent floods in Australia. 3 January 2020. Cloud seeding got its start in 1947, with General Electric scientists working under a military contract to find a way to de-ice planes in cold weather and create fog to obscure troop movements. Today, together with the National Center of Meteorology of the UAE, we can see the application of these new seeding materials in real operations very quickly across UAE to increase the rainfall. Business owners in central Gympie scramble to get stock out of their stores and residents prepare to evacuate. Unattached supercooled water vapour molecules in the clouds condense around these particles. One widely shared post singled out an aviation company to make the unfounded claim that it ran a cloud seeding flight that was contributing to large-scale flooding in the city of Lismore. What are you working on now, and what are you thinking about next? Reeling under the severe heatwaves and drought, some parts of Chongqing city in southern China welcomed the long-awaited rain as the southwestern . CLAIM: A rain-enhancing process known as cloud seeding caused historic flooding in Tasmania, Australia, in 2016 and along Australias southeastern coast this year. A car is seen submerged in floodwater following heavy rains in the northern town of Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, March 30, 2022 in an image taken from video. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. This is part of APs effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Our in-depth reporting reveals whats going on now to prepare you for whats coming next. March 28, 2022. Clouds can be seeded from the ground using silver iodide generators. Water vapor in the atmosphere can then adhere to the particles, and condense into raindrops or snowflakes. Learn more about fact-checking at AP. Australia floods: Nearly a metre of rain in just four days. Published: 00:57 EDT, 31 March 2022 | Updated: 00:57 EDT, 31 March 2022. This process is known as glaciogenic cloud seeding. I'm the Director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. On social media, they blame the extreme rainfall on "cloud seeding" and "weather manipulation". 2022 AFP. The global water shortage has continuously intensified by rapid population growth and economic development around the world. Cloud seeding is still practiced in the Snowy Mountains in NSW today, carried out by Snowy Hydro Limited. Like: 'we have the pilots' names, we know where you live, you're going to pay for this,' kind of stuff," Handel told AFP. What could be the reason behind mass flooding down the east coast of Australia? And cloud. Towards New Zealand, Domensino says, an area of high pressure known as a blocking high stops the system from moving away into the Tasman Sea. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Tasmania saw very low rainfall, around 26 percent below the average for March 2022. At Gympie, 200km north of Brisbane, a flood warning is issued for the Mary River. Do not sell or share my personal information. We also assess the Snowy Schemes reservoir storage levels to ensure additional snowmelt from cloud seeding will not contribute to flooding downstream, Snowy Hydro said. Conspiracy theorists have claimedthe floods devastating Australia's east coast are part of a 'government weather warfare attack'. Handel said he tasked his operations manager, Anthony Berko, with responding to each email and calling people who provided their phone numbers. The most common particulate used in cloud seeding is silver iodide, which has a similar structure to ice crystals and helps supercooled liquid water droplets cluster together. Some social media users are spreading false theories about what has caused multiple floods in Australia in recent years. >$379 million (2022 USD) [1] Heavy flooding broke out in the Central Coast and Sydney areas of New South Wales, Australia, beginning in early July 2022. Dr. Zou leads a groundbreaking research project using nanotechnology to develop cloud seeding materials. The clip is unrelated to recent floods in Australia, however, and dates . Cloud-seeding is a weather-modification practice used to artificially create or promote additional rain/snow from existing clouds. At the moment, all possible solutions that could resolve the water shortage issue should be examined carefully. Hydro Tasmania also denied that its flights were to blame and said in a statement that an analysis shows the operation had no measurable impact on rainfall on that day.. Since silver iodide and not elemental silver is the cloud seeding material, the claims of negative environmental impact are disputed by peer-reviewed research as summarized . We build our cities on rivers for a reason it was good for transport and waste disposal but that also means we built on flood plains, Khan says. Centrelink jobseeker overhauled with new 'point-based system' . A really strong storm, she explained, will already have a very strong updraft and windflow characteristics that help create the cloud to begin with. Media reports estimated at least 22 . (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft), Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. The information and techniques are out of date and their effectiveness is not well understood.. 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