Rainmaking

Last updated April 18, 2024

Rainmaking, also known as artificial precipitation, artificial rainfall and pluviculture, is the act of attempting to artificially induce or increase precipitation, usually to stave off drought or the wider global warming.^[1] According to the clouds' different physical properties, this can be done using airplanes or rockets to sow to the clouds with catalysts such as dry ice, silver iodide and salt powder, to make clouds rain or increase precipitation, to remove or mitigate farmland drought, to increase reservoir irrigation water or water supply capacity, to increase water levels for hydropower generation, or even to solve the global warming problem.

In the United States, rainmaking was attempted by traveling showmen. It was practiced on the American frontier, but may have reached a peak during the Dust Bowl drought of the US west and midwest in the 1930s. The practice was depicted in the 1956 film The Rainmaker . Attempts to bring rain directly have waned with development of the science of meteorology, laws against fraud, and improved weather forecasting, with some exceptions such as cloud seeding and forms of prayer including rain dances, which are still practiced today. Prayers for rain is also a common cultural practice for Christians and Muslims.^{[ citation needed ]} In some Christian areas, clerics of the Eastern Orthodox Church are believed to possess the power to arrest rain, bring hail to the farms of wayward souls, as well as to bring rain when the rainy season falls short.^{[ citation needed ]}

The term is also used metaphorically to describe the process of bringing new clients into a professional practice, such as law, architecture, consulting, advertising, or investment banking—in general, processes that bring money into a company.

It is also used to describe a confidence trick where the scammer takes money from the victim to influence a system over which they have no real control, but a random chance of the outcome happening anyway.

Cloud seeding

Since the 1940s, cloud seeding has been used to change the structure of clouds by dispersing substances into the air, potentially increasing or altering rainfall.^[2] In spite of experiments dating back to at least the start of the 20th century, however, there is much controversy surrounding the efficacy of cloud seeding, and evidence that cloud seeding leads to increased precipitation on the ground is highly equivocal. One difficulty is knowing how much precipitation might have fallen had any particular cloud not been seeded. Operation Popeye was a US military rainmaking operation to increase rains over Vietnam during the Vietnam War in order to slow Vietnamese military truck activity in the region, though this claim happened 60 years later by anti-government groups. Rainmaking is not climate engineering, which seeks to alter the climate, but a form of weather modification, as it seeks only to change local weather.

Wilhelm Reich's Cloudbuster

Austrian-American psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich designed a "cloudbuster" in the United States with which he said he could manipulate streams of "orgone energy" (which he claimed was a primordial cosmic energy) in the atmosphere to induce rain by forcing clouds to form and disperse. It was a set of hollow metal pipes and cables inserted into water, which Reich argued created a stronger orgone energy field than was in the atmosphere, the water drawing the atmospheric orgone through the pipes. Reich called his research "Cosmic Orgone Engineering".

Rain dances and prayers

In many societies around the world, rain dances and other rituals have been used to stimulate rainfall. Some Native Americans used rain dances extensively. European examples include ceremonies in the Balkans known as Perperuna and Dodola and Caloian . Some US farmers attempt to bring rain during droughts through prayer. These rituals differ greatly in their specifics, but share a common concern with bringing rain through spiritual means. Typical of these ceremonies was the public prayer service for rain by then-governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, in 2007.^[3]

In Muslim societies, in times of calamity such as drought, the Imam is asked to provide spiritual help to the community in the hope of inducing God to fall rain (Rain_prayer). The rain prayer (Arabic: صلاة الاستسقاء; ṣalāt al-istisqa, "rain request prayer") is a sunnah salah (Islamic prayer) for requesting and seeking rain water from God. A Muslim prayer offered to God seeking rain water. Indeed, the Muslim ummah regard the rain as a great divine blessing, and every time it rains showers, people rejoice and thank God Almighty.

Contemporary Jewish liturgy includes prayers for rain, seasonally, as a part of the morning, afternoon, and evening, daily amidah prayer, during mid-autumn to mid-spring. During summer, this prayer is changed from the prayer for rain, to a prayer for dew.^{[ citation needed ]}

In popular culture

The video of the song "Cloudbusting" (based on the story of Wilhelm Reich) by Kate Bush features Donald Sutherland as an inventor of a rainmaking machine.^[4]
The 1956 film The Rainmaker tells of a traveling salesman/con artist who claims to be a rainmaker. (A country song, Lizzie and the Rainman, would be based on the film.)

Related Research Articles

A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions. A drought can last for days, months or years. Drought often has large impacts on the ecosystems and agriculture of affected regions, and causes harm to the local economy. Annual dry seasons in the tropics significantly increase the chances of a drought developing, with subsequent increased wildfire risks. Heat waves can significantly worsen drought conditions by increasing evapotranspiration. This dries out forests and other vegetation, and increases the amount of fuel for wildfires.

Rainmaking is a weather modification ritual that attempts to invoke rain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weather modification</span> Act of intentionally altering or manipulating the weather

Weather modification is the act of intentionally manipulating or altering the weather. The most common form of weather modification is cloud seeding, which increases rain or snow, usually for the purpose of increasing the local water supply. Weather modification can also have the goal of preventing damaging weather, such as hail or hurricanes, from occurring; or of provoking damaging weather against the enemy, as a tactic of military or economic warfare like Operation Popeye, where clouds were seeded to prolong the monsoon in Vietnam. Weather modification in warfare has been banned by the United Nations under the Environmental Modification Convention.

In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls from clouds due to gravitational pull. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor, so that the water condenses and "precipitates" or falls. Thus, fog and mist are not precipitation but colloids, because the water vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated: cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air. Precipitation forms as smaller droplets coalesce via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Short, intense periods of rain in scattered locations are called showers.

Cloud seeding is a type of weather modification that aims to change the amount or type of precipitation, mitigate hail or disperse fog. The usual objective is to increase rain or snow, either for its own sake or to prevent precipitation from occurring in days afterward.

Charles Mallory Hatfield was an American "rainmaker".

Rainfall and the tropical climate dominate the tropical rain belt, which oscillates from the northern to the southern tropics over the course of the year, roughly following the solar equator. The tropical rain belt is an area of active rain that is positioned mostly around the tropics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cloudbuster</span> Pseudoscientific rain maker

A cloudbuster is a device designed by Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), which Reich claimed could produce rain by manipulating what he called "orgone energy" present in the atmosphere.

The characteristics of United States rainfall climatology differ significantly across the United States and those under United States sovereignty. Summer and early fall bring brief, but frequent thundershowers and tropical cyclones which create a wet summer and drier winter in the eastern Gulf and lower East Coast. During the winter, and spring, Pacific storm systems bring Hawaii and the western United States most of their precipitation. Low pressure systems moving up the East Coast and through the Great Lakes, bring cold season precipitation to from the Midwest to New England, as well as Great Salt Lake. The snow to liquid ratio across the contiguous United States averages 13:1, meaning 13 inches (330 mm) of snow melts down to 1 inch (25 mm) of water.

The climate of South Africa is determined by South Africa's situation between 22°S and 35°S, in the Southern Hemisphere's subtropical zone, and its location between two oceans, Atlantic and the Indian.

The climate of the United States varies due to changes in latitude, and a range of geographic features, including mountains and deserts. Generally, on the mainland, the climate of the U.S. becomes warmer the further south one travels, and drier the further west, until one reaches the West Coast.

Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water for hydroelectric power plants, crop irrigation, and suitable conditions for many types of ecosystems.

Droughts are a relatively common feature of the weather in the United Kingdom, with one around every 5–10 years on average. These droughts are usually during the summer, when a blocking high causes hot, dry weather for an extended period. However this means that droughts can vary in their characteristics. All types of drought cause issues across all sectors, with impacts extending to the ecosystem, agriculture and the economy of the whole country in severe cases of drought. The south east of the country usually suffers most, as it has the highest population and the lowest average precipitation per year, which is even lower in a drought. Even in these areas in severe droughts, the definition, impacts, effects and management are all minimal in comparison to drought prone areas such as Australia and parts of the United States. In recent years however, the summers of 2007, 2008, 2009, August 2010 and 2012 were wetter than normal, 2007 being wettest on record. Droughts have continued to occur in recent times, with spring 2011, July 2013, summer 2018, spring 2020, spring and summer 2022 and May and June 2023 all featuring excessively dry periods for part or all of the UK, and will likely become more severe due to climate change over the 21st century.

The 2010–2011 China drought was a drought that began in late 2010 and impacted eight provinces in the northern part of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was the worst drought to hit the country in 60 years, and it affected most of wheat-producing regions in the PRC.

The historical and ongoing droughts in California result from various complex meteorological phenomena, some of which are not fully understood by scientists.

The Thailand Royal Rainmaking Project was initiated in November 1955 by King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thai farmers repeatedly suffered the effects of drought. The king resolved to do something about it and proposed a solution to the dearth of rain: artificial rainmaking, or cloud seeding. The program is run by the Department of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation.

The United Arab Emirates Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP) is a global research initiative offering a grant of US$5 million over a three-year period to be shared by up to five winning research projects in the field of rain enhancement.

The 2011–2017 California drought persisted from December 2011 to March 2017 and consisted of the driest period in California's recorded history, late 2011 through 2014. The drought wiped out 102 million trees from 2011 to 2016, 62 million of those during 2016 alone. The cause of the drought was attributed to a ridge of high pressure in the Pacific Sea—the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge"—which often barred powerful winter storms from reaching the state.

Cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates is a weather modification technique used by the government to address water challenges in the country. Cloud seeding is also referred to as man made precipitation and artificial rain making. The United Arab Emirates is one of the first countries in the Persian Gulf region to use cloud seeding technology. UAE scientists use cloud seeding technology to supplement the country's water insecurity, which stems from the extremely hot climate. They use weather radars to continuously monitor the atmosphere of the country. Forecasters and scientists have estimated that cloud seeding operations can enhance rainfall by as much as 30-35% percent in a clear atmosphere, and up to 10-15% in a more humid atmosphere. This practice has caused concerns regarding the impact on the environment because it is difficult to predict the long-term global implications.

Paleoclimatic records indicate that the Earth's water cycle has undergone natural fluctuations since Earth's formation, however, current changes in the water cycle can be primarily attributed to a changing climate as a result of anthropogenic emissions. The effects of climate change on the water cycle are profound and have been described as an intensification or a strengthening of the water cycle. This effect has been observed since at least 1980. The global water cycle encompasses the continuous circulation of water through the Earth's surface, atmosphere, subsurface and stores such as glaciers, oceans and ground water. It is an essential mechanism for maintaining freshwater resources, as well as other water reservoirs such as oceans, Ice sheets, atmosphere and land surface. The water cycle is essential to life on Earth and plays a large role in maintaining a stable global climate. The warming of our planet is expected to cause changes in the water cycle for various reasons. Changes is the water cycle can have global, regional and local impacts, impacting water-resource availability, the frequency and severity of storms, droughts and floods, and further increases in global warming through increased water vapor in atmosphere.

References

↑ Spence, Clark C. (1980). The Rainmakers . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803241178.
↑ Dennis, Arnett S. (1980), Weather Modification by Cloud Seeding, International Geophysics, vol. 24, New York: Academic Press, pp. 2–3, ISBN 0080954588.
↑ Lohr, Kathy (14 November 2007). "In Drought-Stricken Georgia, a Prayer for Rain". National Public Radio.
↑ Kate Bush - Cloudbusting - Official Music Video Uploaded by KateBushMusic on Dec 17, 2010 on YouTube