Photo via flickr by ms4jah

The Russian government has used rain prevention methods since Soviet times, seeding clouds for major celebrations three times a year—Victory Day, City Day and, more recently, Russia Day.

Alexander Akimenkov has seeded clouds over Moscow on important state holidays for many years. He says the Russians use two different methods to try to drive the rain away.

“Either there’s a special machine that spits out silver iodide, dry ice or cement into the clouds, or a hatch opens and a guy with a shovel seeds the clouds manually,” he explains.

“As soon as the chemicals touch the cloud, a hole appears. It becomes bigger and bigger, and it either rains right there and then or, if the clouds aren’t very dense, they disperse without any precipitation.”

There are also private companies that for some $6,000 per hour say they can guarantee sunshine on your wedding day—or for any other private party. Many ecologists agree that these techniques, also used in many other countries for irrigation purposes, do not pose much of a threat to the environment or people’s health, as the period of active influence on the clouds is very short.

But when Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov suggested the technique could shift the winter snow outside the capital—and therefore save more than $10m in snow-clearing costs—many felt the city authorities were going a bit too far. Even if the idea might appeal to Moscow drivers, tired of constant traffic jams—especially bad in snowy conditions—it has stirred concerns among local ecologists.

“Millions of tonnes of snow diverted from Moscow will create chaos in the areas where it is forced to fall and might even lead to the collapse of bridges and roofs,” said Alexei Yablokov, one of Russia’s leading environmentalists, who was ecological adviser to former President Boris Yeltsin. “Besides, a lack of snow in Moscow would cause many problems in the capital itself,” he said.

“Why do we need snow in Moscow? Snow on the ground helps the roots of trees to survive during severe frosts. If there’s no snow, lots of vegetation—trees, bushes—will die. Snow also cleans the atmosphere very effectively. If there’s nothing to clean the Moscow atmosphere, many people will die—there will be tens or even hundreds of additional deaths,” explains Mr Yablokov.

The idea didn’t come to the Moscow mayor from nowhere, it is based on facts. “In the early 1980s, back in the Soviet period, there was a special service to limit snowfall over Moscow. It stopped working during perestroika [Gorbachev's reforms], when money became scarce. Some eight to 10 planes had to find clouds with the most precipitation and spray them with crystallizing chemicals. Not all water vapor in the atmosphere turns to precipitation, and for the snow to fall, water vapor should concentrate on ice crystals first. So we were making snow fall before it reached Moscow and this work reduced the amount of snow in the capital by 20, 30 and sometimes 40%.”

Regardless of the Moscow authorities’ final decision on snow cloud seeding, Russia remains one of the few nations where weather control is more than using anti-hail cannons and battling droughts.

So if you want to visit Moscow and don’t fancy rain, go there on one of the three precipitation-free holidays.

And if you want to ensure your wedding day is dry—it might just be possible to make it happen.

via BBC

Photo via flickr by chefranden

Scientists have long suspected that the sun affects climate on Earth, but that connection has proved hard to pin down. Researchers recently demonstrated that the 11-year cycle of solar activity influences weather in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Even then the exact cause remained obscure, since the sun’s brightness varies by just one-tenth of a percent.

An international team led by Gerald Meehl, a climatologist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, announced that the sun’s outsize influence results from its combined effects on our atmosphere and oceans. When the sun is at its most intense, ozone in the stratosphere absorbs more ultraviolet energy, making areas near the equator warmer than usual. The added heat changes wind patterns, bringing more rain to the western tropics. At the same time, the extra sunlight causes more evaporation off  the ocean, which adds to downpours in the western tropics. His results should help climatologists predict monsoons in Asia and overall climate in North America and might someday allow them to estimate seasonal rainfall years in advance.

Meanwhile, Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark and his colleagues are exploring a broader climate impact of solar activity. He believes that cosmic rays—energetic subatomic particles from outer space—help seed cloud-forming water droplets in the lower atmosphere. During peak solar activity, eruptions from the sun spew out huge clouds of plasma that shield Earth from those cosmic rays. After examining cloud cover and cosmic ray fluxes, Svensmark concluded that declines in cosmic rays lead to fewer clouds, implying that an active sun could lead to warmer surface temperatures. Following the strongest solar eruptions, he found that the sky lost 7 percent of its cloud water.

via Discover Magazine

The Earth is not a pile of rocks. The Earth is alive. Based upon the chemical composition of oxygen and reactive gases in the atmosphere produced by the various dynamic processes of life on Earth, The Gaia Hypothesis, proposed by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock, suggests that the Earth is a living organism. In fact, our body is like the planet in that its temperature is regulated. Like the Earth, we shiver to make ourselves warm, and when it’s hot, we sweat to cool ourselves down. As the world focuses on global warming, the Gaian understanding that not only are people connected to the rest of life, but life is connected to a system, has become paramount. The reality, however, is that man is not that special. People have been around for less than three million years, and the Earth has been spinning for about four thousand million years, and in that time, it has seen lots of species come and go. And while industry turns to renewable energy as the solution, Lovelock, in his recent book, “The Revenge of Gaia” says we’re too late, global warming is irreversible and we should expect, by 2100, 80% of the world’s population to be wiped out. However, optimistic scientist Freeman Dyson, who was slated as “The Global Warming Heretic” on the cover of the New York Times magazine disagrees, as does now-deceased famed author Michael Crichton who stated, after the release of his book, “State of Fear” on Charlie Rose, that he doesn’t believe humanity is headed for catastrophe. And although Crichton said that he liked Al Gore, he said he was wrong, in both facts and attitude, and suggests that if science can’t predict what the weather will be like next month, long-term climate forecasts are impossible, and what we are really witnessing today is that drama and crisis gets attention. Whether or not global warming is a “party line” as Dyson proposed or as serious as Lovelock prophesized remains to be seen. Perhaps, the best solution for us right now is just to sit down for a second, look around, and “breathe.”