Directed Weather Modification

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Name

What is the item

The process of modifying or controlling specific weather systems (not geoengineering or climate modification)

What Horizon is it on

Sixth Horizon

Explanation of the item

In 2014, the U.S. Air Force shut down the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), funded by DARPA and located in Alaska, the mission of which was to “study[] the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.” Basically, the main purpose of the system (although other experiments were conducted) was intended to generate radio waves in a specific frequency range in order to improve the efficiency of communications and counteract unexpected interruptions in transmission due to activity in the ionosphere.

However, conspiracy theorists claim that the program was aimed towards creating and controlling major weather events and conducting “electromagnetic warfare.” Though the claims are unsubstantiated, the science behind weather modification has been a subject of debate for decades. It’s important to note that this article is assessing the viability of directed weather control, not geoengineering or climate modification, which is the process of slowly altering a planet’s climate or geological makeup over time – something humans as a species have been doing to the Earth through the release of greenhouse gases for generations.

While HAARP has never been proven to be aimed towards (or succeeding at) controlling any weather system, there are companies and technologies that seek to do so, albeit on a small scale. Weather modification, Inc., for example, employs the use of cloud seeding, which is the process of injecting particles like silver iodide into clouds in order to increase precipitation and induce rain or snow. This process is said to induce precipitation because ice is inclined to bond to the molecular structure of the silver iodide, thereby increasing the efficiency of precipitation in parts of the cloud that would otherwise be inefficient. Currently, Weather Modification Inc. offers services that they claim has the effect of increasing precipitation, mitigating hail damage and dispersing fog.

The viability of cloud seeding is controversial at best, despite the fact that some governments spend millions of dollars to employ the practice in high-population, drought-ridden agricultural areas like the Maharashtra region of India and various areas in China and Thailand. However, the governmental investment is more likely an attempt to quell social unrest rather than actual belief in the quasi-science. However, that doesn’t change the fact that cloud-seeding research is booming. Yet it is important to keep in mind that even Bruce Boe, president of Weather Modification, Inc. states that this isn’t ‘weather modification’ but it is ‘cloud modification.’

By most accounts, cloud modification may have an effect on precipitation, however it is by no means a guaranteed measure of inducing rain. Furthermore, critics claim that cloud seeding merely speeds up the process of rain that would otherwise naturally occur, i.e., there must already be precipitation in the air for cloud seeding to work – the process does not create clouds where there are none. Another type of technology, laser-induced cloud seeding seeks to achieve this.

Swiss physicist Jean-Pierre Wolf has been working on a process that would not just pull water molecules together within a cloud to induce rainfall, but instead his process would induce the cloud itself. The process utilizes TERAMOBILE, the “first femtosecond TW laser in the world”, which utilizes “ultrashort terawatt (TW) pulses . . . [that would] propagate in the atmosphere” and modulate the weather. Wolf also claims that this laser seeding process can be used to “trigger lightning in clouds,” however these tests are in their infancy and there is no real understanding of whether it will work or not. Wolf claims that these types of lasers could “repair the weather, reducing the occurrence of hurricanes, thunderstorms, flooding, and drought.”

This technology is currently classified as Sixth Horizon because the science behind weather systems is reasonably well-understood, and there are companies and researchers conducting experiments to prove that weather can reliably be controlled, however there is no study or research that suggests any one technology, or combination thereof, has the ability to do this. Therefore, weather control is Sixth Horizon because it is essentially credible science fiction.

Photos or Videos (if available)

http://www.int3ger.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cloud_seeding2.jpg

Teramobile Laser

http://www.teramobile.org/teramobile.html

Photograph a self-guided filament induced in air by a high-power infrared (800nm) laser pulse.

http://www.teramobile.org/teramobile.html

Issues

The issues with weather control are enormous to say the least. If such a process were available, the first issue is who would control it? With the potential to trigger rainstorms, and manage floods and hurricanes, there is no doubt that governments, private companies, non-profit organizations and private individuals would want to utilize this technology for their respective benefits. However, weather systems across the world are necessarily all integrated, so by changing one system, other systems would be affected as well.

Another issue arises with the possibility of using this type of technology as a weapon or sanction tactic. If quarreling or warring nations wielded state-sponsored weather-control devices, when would it be appropriate to use it against one another and in what capacity? If rival companies were able to use this sort of device, how would that affect the economy and their respective markets? What about if a terrorist organization were able to get a hold of the device? If the type of destruction caused by hurricane Katrina and the 2004 South-Asian tsunami could be replicated at will by terrorist groups, the repercussions would be unimaginable.