'Cloud seeding is being used to increase rainfall by corrupt governments to act on mother nature. Oct 15 (Reuters) - Floods caused by torrential rain are hitting large swathes of southeast Australia, inundating hundreds of homes and forcing authorities to urge thousands of people to evacuate . Mr Bartolo moved to the Gold Coast in November 2020 after he was charged with incitement for organising illegal protests during Melbourne's lockdown. March 28, 2022. What are conventional cloud seeding materials, and then how does nanotechnology come into play? They are made of many super cooled water vapors, so although they are below zero, they remain as vapor. 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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. Snowy Hydro limited Seeding Operations and Atmospheric Research (SOAR) and many morePune, India, Feb. 21, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global cloud seeding market size is set to gain traction from the increasing adoption of weather modification technologies by various countries, shares . The process works by shooting microscopic particles of silver iodide into existing clouds using land based generators or aircraft. Learn more about fact-checking at AP. Compared with the floods of 2011, Khan says this is about 50% more water into the dam in about half of the time. 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. ', Pictured: Military vehicles move through Lismore, NSW, with much of town now underwater, James Bartolo (pictured)says the weather event is 'not natural' and created by the government. Researchers have been trying to . Where did it go wrong. Then we can later analyze at what stage the droplets formed and at what number and size of the droplets. Cloud seeding programs in the upper Colorado River Basin, for instance, cost around $1.5 million each year. "Handel Aviation operates aerial photography aircraft only. Play it now! In it, the newsreader reports on concerns by Tasmanian residents that the region's worst floods in 40 years could have been linked to cloud seeding. 2023 ACC TOURNAMENT SEEDING AS OF FEB. 26. As well as the rising river levels, the amount of rain falling locally causes flash floods all across the city and its outer suburbs as creeks swell, inundating areas that escaped the 2011 floods. After extensive testing, the CSIRO has determined that cloud seeding is unlikely to be effective in much of Australia. Cloud seeding is a real thing. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft), Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. It is not yet known whether these findings also apply to wild conditions. 2023 BBC. Using this information is very good to compare the performance of different materials, and we did that extensively. 'I've been in Wagga Wagga for the last four days and the amount of chemtrails in the sky above the Riverina region is beyond comprehension,' the person commented. This is done by firing small particles (usually silver iodide) into clouds . Laurel: Your research focuses on the cloud seeding material itself, specifically the nanomaterials as you mentioned, which is a more effective tool in generating rain from existing clouds. If experts complete seeding at the right time, it leads to more moisture supply, which will eventually create rainwater. This podcast is produced in partnership with the UAE Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai. It involves manipulating existing clouds to try and help them produce more rain or snow. The natural occurring condensation nuclei are such as dust particles, volcano flash, or pollens. For cloud seeding to produce rain you need moisture to begin with. >$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. Conventional water resources such as rivers, lakes, and groundwater have become very limited, which is driving scientists and engineers to look for alternative water resources, says Dr. Linda Zou, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Khalifa University of Science and Technology. While scientists have blamed the. Posts shared online alleged aerial survey pilots from Handel Aviation caused a second deluge in the flood-ravaged New South Wales town of Lismore on March 31 by cloud seeding dispersing a substance into the clouds to prompt rain. And cloud. Dr. Zou: Yes. Cloud seeding is usually carried out by sprinkling particles from a plane. Try refreshing this page and updating them one Snowy Hydro follows strict environmental guidelines to ensure that cloud seeding does not contribute to increased levels of silver in or around the Snowy Mountains. 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. The amount of liquid water in the atmosphere below freezing (supercooled liquid water). Share. So, what is cloud seeding, how does it work and where is it used in Australia? 1. . This show is available wherever you get your podcasts. . This material can initiate ice nucleation followed by rapid growth starting from a temperature of minus 80 degrees. 2. Clouds can be seeded from the ground using silver iodide generators. Cloud seeding can also, in some cases, cause the cloud to grow larger and last longer than it would have without the modification. "Cloud seeding is not that effective, people do it only under very special circumstances," he said. For general feedback and enquiries, please contact us through our Help Desk. Laurel: Back to your technology, you filed a patent on the cloud seeding material itself. If you enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll take a moment to rate and review us. Theres no evidence to suggest it played a role in the 2022 floods in southeastern Australia, either. Four police officers knocked down the former bodybuilder's door when he refused to open it, claiming they didn't have authorisation to be on the property. The previous record was 600.4mm in 1974. Experimental cloud seeding technology does actually exist and has been used in places like China and the UAE. 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 innovation of my project is the characteristics data we obtained from the experiment. Bartolo's move to Gold Coast came after getting arrested in a dramatic police raid in Melbourne in September 2020. Nanotechnology can engineer material and design the material with well controlled size, shapes, and properties. I used an eight cubic meter chamber with controlled humidity and temperature. Dr. Zou leads a groundbreaking research project using nanotechnology to develop cloud seeding materials. Unfortunately, such material is unpredictable, where and how much available. As the rain falls, the Brisbane River hits moderate flood levels. There is no evidence to prove cloud seeding affected the flood. You can find out more about Snowy Hydros cloud seeding operations here. This is a black-and-white photograph of a cloud-seeding operation over the Pacific Ocean near Sydney. Conventional water resources such as rivers, lakes, and groundwater have become very limited, which is driving scientists and engineers to look for alternative water resources. She was awarded a grant by the UAE Research Program on rain enhancement science from 2016 to 2019. In Australia, cloud seeding is used in some areas to increase surface water runoff for use in the production of hydropower. In their place, colder waters come up to the surface. Pictured: Local residents wade through floodwater in Lismore, NSW. So they form super cool vapor and crystallize into ice particles. 'The Gold Coast and surrounds is currently under a government weather warfare attack,' he told his army of devoted followers. Apr 22, 2022. Wivenhoe has never dealt with that volume of water but it was lucky it was down at 60% at the start. Laurel: In the past, one of the challenges scientists encountered when researching cloud seeding was the lack of a simulation environment. On the other hand, cloud seeding practice is to release artificial seeding materials as nuclei to initiate the water vapor in the cloud to condense into droplets and promote the formation of large droplets until they grow big enough to fall as rain. 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. Weather and cloud-seeding experts say it is impossible for the rain-making technology to work on such a large scale, and the incessant downpours are due to a La Nina weather system - a fact that . Nobody has ever seen this amount of rain in such a short period of time over our south-east catchment, says the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk. On Tuesday morning evacuation orders are issued for South Ballina. La Nia events can influence weather in different ways across the . A pilot from Handel Aviation in Cessna 210N Centurion VH-JIL did a breakfast time cloud seeding run over Lismore South & Ballina today while sightseeing the massive flood below him, the post claimed without evidence, adding the names and contact information of employees at the company. Feast to Famine: Mass Floods and Australia's High-Speed Rail. 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. An independent investigation sought by Tasmania's parliament into the causes of the 2016 flooding found that cloud seeding, a process aimed at increasing precipitation, had no impact on the severe weather. April 8, 2022 / 6:52 AM / AFP . Cloud is an effective and safe way to enhance rain and snowfalls above natural levels. Dr. Zou: Yeah. Laurel: To successfully cloud seed, you need a number of things: 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. UAE is in the arid climate zone, and the government has already taken the initiative of this UAE research program for re-enhancement science. Mass Floods and Australia's High-Speed Rail. Observed so far: 1. Image: How cloud seeding works in the NSW Snowy Mountains. Laurel: Dr. Zou, thank you so much for being with us here on the Business Lab. There is no evidence to back up such theories, but this hasn't prevented falsehoods from reaching thousands of people online. According to Domensino, some 611.6mm of rain fell on the city between 9am Friday and 6pm Sunday the highest three-day total in records dating back to 1840. Conspiracy theorists have claimed that cloud seeding leads to climate change and natural disasters like floods. They say it's all part of a government plan to "weaponise" the weather against its own people - a popular conspiracy trope that has been around for years. Could you explain in more detail how cloud seeding works? Cloud seeding is perhaps the ultimate silver bullet, in which literal silver in the form of silver iodide is infused into clouds, causing ice crystals to form and water to condense into rain or snow. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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. We wont run out of key ingredients for climate action, but mining comes with social and environmental ramifications. It involves manipulating existing clouds to try and help them produce more rain or snow. "The idea that this is happening on a widespread scale, and that there is some motive to manipulate the weather is a complete myth," says Dr Ella Gilbert, a climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey. That is about three Sydney Harbours worth of water. Prime inner-city areas including much of the South Bank precinct are underwater. Cloud seeding: Making rain in desert. At the moment, I'm working collaboratively on a project to evaluate the effects of these materials in the open air. An atmospheric research expert told The Associated Press that cloud seeding would not change the dynamics of a cloud enough to cause massive flooding' (https://bit.ly/3NwnqJq). 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. Information supplied by Weatherzone based on data provided by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Copyright 2023 Weatherzone | v6.5.8 (b498), Note to media: You are welcome to republish text from the above news article as direct quotes from Weatherzone. In Australia, water can be a scarce commodity, with variousareas of the country suffering through prolonged droughts at times. About as much as eight months' worth of rain has come down in just four days, bringing parts of Australia's largest city to a standstill. Usually, silver iodide particles are used. BBC. Some areas that flow into the river have had 300mm of rain in just six hours. Reeling under the severe heatwaves and drought, some parts of Chongqing city in southern China welcomed the long-awaited rain as the southwestern . Additionally, silver iodide, a common agent . one wrote. The flight was collecting images for aerial maps provided to Australian mapping company NearMap, he said. Read about our approach to external linking. Silver iodide is an ice-forming agent, which causes supercooled water droplets to freeze in the clouds. A device at the top of the chamber releases the seeding materials. These fall to the ground as snow or raindrops, depending on the surface temperatures. The colors depict the wetness percentile; that is, how the levels of groundwater compare to long-term records (1948-2012). Cloud condensation nuclei can be introduced into the atmosphere naturally or artificially. However, both are far overshadowed by the disaster of 1804, whose water discharge, with a peak discharge of about 1,200 m3/s, was twice as massive as the 1910 event. A rain-enhancing process known as cloud seeding caused historic flooding in Tasmania, Australia, in 2016 and along Australias southeastern coast this year. Another weapon used to flood everyone,' a third wrote. Source: nationalparks.nsw.gov.au The Queensland capitals mayor, Adrian Schrinner, says there is a rain bomb over the city. Pictured: Large parts of Lismore in NSW are completely underwater after record rainfall, Hundreds replied to the post with messages claiming 'the government' is using experimental technology to carry out 'cloud seeding'. If you continue to get this message, Sarah Tessendorf, a project scientist at the Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research who leads the centers work on cloud seeding, told the AP that claims linking the process to flooding lack an understanding of how cloud seeding works. 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.. Resources: https: . In the U.S., studies have found a few percentage points of increase in precipitation. This shows us the risk is real to have two serious flood events in just 11 years is a pretty high frequency for a major city like Brisbane to have to deal with.. The aim is to get other innovative projects from scientists in the field of rain enhancement from all over the world, with the winning ideas obtaining a grant of $5 million to work and improve on concepts for a period of three years. Handel said he tasked his operations manager, Anthony Berko, with responding to each email and calling people who provided their phone numbers. My research work has been supported in their first cycle and received excellent worldwide exposure. A Hydro Tasmania spokesperson told the AP that it has since stopped conducting cloud seeding. Showers and #thunderstorms will develop across eastern and central #Vic and parts of northern #Tas on Wednesday, continuing across the region until the weekend extending into eastern #SA and western Vic as well.Latest forecasts: https://t.co/EGP9Qynjs3 pic.twitter.com/4dZwkN8TKM. Dr. Zou: Yes, you are right. A dangerous and bizarre conspiracy theory is circulating that the devastating floods which have torn through Australia's east coast are part of a 'government weather warfare attack'. That aircraft was capturing images of the flood damage at the time, according to the statement. UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, New UAE cloud seeding test in Texas shows 'promising results', Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook, How Rust went from a side project to the worlds most-loved programming language. Mar 27, 2022 Cloud Seeding, . One reason for the wetness is likely La Nia, which for the first time this century has returned for three consecutive years. Laurel: This is very critical because the cloud seeding materials go very high up into the atmosphere where it is very cold, correct? What are the challenges with then deploying the material out in the real world? I'm the Director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. However, some research has raised doubts about its longterm effects on the environment. 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. Dr. Zou: We want to move the materials, as I mentioned, from laboratory already and scale up, so it has a chance of reaching the market and to reach many different parts of the world as well, because there are so many countries worldwide that practice weather modification. 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