Can We Control The Weather

[Thundery wintry showers]

I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of geoengineering- I support carbon capture and storage schemes for example, as this simply tries to neutralise some of the existing anthropogenic contributions to atmospheric composition. However, I don't think we should go the "anthropogenic global cooling" route except as a last resort.

While I could imagine this becoming feasible in the distant future, there would be a political aspect to this question requiring the co-operation of all or at least most nations affected by weather modification. If the modification improved the climates of all countries then I can't really see any dissent arising. A scheme that would for example reduce summer temperatures in hot, dry regions and add rainfall when most useful, would almost certainly meet with approval. I'm sure the people of Texas and Oklahoma would wish to see some means of changing their past summer's scorching drought to something closer to their normal summer weather.

This is a tricky one, because what about types of weather that are bad for the economy and health & safety, e.g. snow and thunderstorms? Dissenting voices could easily be dismissed for being "selfish" in their desire to keep snow and thunderstorms for personal gratification. I don't fancy the idea of the UK as a snow/thunder/convection-free land, with maximum temperatures ranging from a steady 13C in January to 22C in July.

Fortunately(!) the chances of this ever happening are extremely remote.

[Alan Robinson]

we could fill in the North Sea -

It could give us the benefit of slightly warmer summers and slightly colder winters on average with extra land to accommodate our increasing population.

In The Netherlands the saying goes "God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland".

I am sure from a civil engineering business perspective the Dutch would jump at the chance to reclaim the entire North Sea. But I'd say doing so would alter their climate considerably. Their winters can be bad enough as it is, but suddenly they would be as far from the sea as Slovakia is now, and that means deeper cold. Anyway, there would be hue and cry from the rest of the Dutch, because what is The Netherlands without its ports? Imagine that country without the port of Rotterdam; its econonomy would be zilch. The Belgians would be entirely in favour of shutting down Rotterdam, it would benefit Antwerpen.

Maybe a compromise would be to fill in just the southern section between Dover, Vlissingen, Hellevoetsluis and Cromer. That is after all the shallow bit, easy to fill in, and would leave Rotterdam open for business as usual.

How would we name the new land? Galloper Heights?

No Mike, the more I ponder your proposal, the less feasible it becomes. The main obstacle is French intervention. Filling in the southern North Sea would make the Mitterand Monument between Folkestone and Cocquelles look a real white elephant.

And how are we going to protect the solution from freezing in the pipes at say, -50C?

Heat trace lines wrapped round the pipe if necessary - powered by photovoltaic cells of course. At 10 GPa though, it is possible the pipe contents would be fluid without heating, though I have no data about such extreme conditions.

Edited September 16, 2011 by Alan Robinson

[Zenarcher]

First of all I've added a poll to get some votes in on this.

So lets say in future or in some way technology allows us to control the weather in any way we want and there are many good and bad things about it so here are mine and you can add to it if you want

Pros

1. Wouldn't have to worry about being in danger of severe weather.

2. Life's and peoples homes and businesses would be saved every year from tornadoes, hurricanes etc.

3. Farmers wouldn't have to worry about droughts any more

4. No more flooding.

5. Can have a snowy Christmas.

Cons:

1. Anyone who has a job to do with the weather would lose there job as there would be no point having a forecaster if we can control the weather.

2. Weather sites like this and companies would shut down however I think weather sites would still go as people would still talk about the weather.

3. Those who love forecasting and weather model watching all of that would be gone and the companies who run the weather models would also close down.

4. Storm chasers would have nothing to chase.

5. It would be interfering with nature and may cause problems also what if something went wrong while controlling the weather like an error that could cause destruction.

I've made 5 points each so it seems for an everyday person all would seem okay but those involved in the weather community would be seriously affected jobs and companies would shut down and if an error happened while controlling the weather it could cause something serious.

[A Winter's Tale]

First of all I've added a poll to get some votes in on this.

So lets say in future or in some way technology allows us to control the weather in any way we want and there are many good and bad things about it so here are mine and you can add to it if you want

Pros

1. Wouldn't have to worry about being in danger of severe weather.

2. Life's and peoples homes and businesses would be saved every year from tornadoes, hurricanes etc.

3. Farmers wouldn't have to worry about droughts any more

4. No more flooding.

5. Can have a snowy Christmas.

Cons:

1. Anyone who has a job to do with the weather would lose there job as there would be no point having a forecaster if we can control the weather.

2. Weather sites like this and companies would shut down however I think weather sites would still go as people would still talk about the weather.

3. Those who love forecasting and weather model watching all of that would be gone and the companies who run the weather models would also close down.

4. Storm chasers would have nothing to chase.

5. It would be interfering with nature and may cause problems also what if something went wrong while controlling the weather like an error that could cause destruction.

I've made 5 points each so it seems for an everyday person all would seem okay but those involved in the weather community would be seriously affected jobs and companies would shut down and if an error happened while controlling the weather it could cause something serious.

Very interesting to think about.

The question is who will control it. Let's say that one country gets lots of heat and another nearby gets lots of cold weather and then you could get some interesting results. But it would never work considering the way the atmosphere corresponds to the movement of the earth - humans could never interfere with it. And if we could, there would be some conflicting weather scenarios and it's best to let nature take it's course.

The only reason that I'd think that controlling the weather would be good would be in situations such as drought in Africa (or anywhere), areas with flooding or it could be used on a very local scale to boom production in agriculture or scientific enterprises. I think that it would be bad to have worldwide weather controlled as it's best to let nature take it's course (too much conflict if we would change it) and letting nature take it's course means that the world could generally work in a normal manner in terms of its relation with the conditions of the atmosphere. If we could control the world's weather then I think that would be wrong - should be left to work naturally.

Only reasons I would like it is to sort out areas that need drastic change or to stop catastrophes. The feasable way that I could see working is localised control, where a settlement or area could control the weather for an industry or for particular events. However, if we could get one extreme to another in a small area then that could lead to some very unstable weather outside of the area that's controlled.

[Guest]

No - as much as I would love to put giant mirrors in space reflecting the sun's light over the UK during the long dark nights of winter to enable us to still get 16 hours of light a day we really know so little about the weather and climate, especially in respect of cause and effect. The unexpected still happens despite the best efforts of our forecasters.

Ok to try and modify things locally such as by cloud seeding to either try and induce rain in a particular area or to reduce the effects of a hurricane but I am very mindful that one area's gain would be another area's loss.

So until we are really sure that we know what we are doing it is still a big NO NO with me.

[Thundery wintry showers]

If we managed to obtain full control of the weather somehow, I think we would have to say goodbye to anything with "convection", "thunderstorms" or "snow" in the description- even at Christmas. We live in a culture where social and recreational benefits of things are typically considered null and void if said "things" are associated with any sort of health and safety risk (because work and safety are essential for survival while recreation technically isn't), so what chances has disruptive weather got of not being outlawed?

I can see a case for weather modification in areas that are suffering catastrophes like severe droughts in the marginal African communities but I have my doubts- we'd most likely see a slow incremental expansion of the definition of "catastrophes" such that we would eventually see the weather modified to prevent major cold spells in winter or thunderstorms in summer.

Another problem is that due to the behaviour of the atmosphere, modifying the weather in one area will impact the weather in another area. What if we were to have arguments between the English and the French vying to have an area of high convective potential shifted north or south to spare the two countries thunderstorms, and sums of money being invoked to produce a halfway-house agreement?

Another problem is that the argument "you can't enjoy snow or thunderstorms or convection because by doing so you are wishing excess deaths for your own personal gratification- you cannot justify killing for pleasure" would have a lot more weight behind it if the weather became something we could control. Wanting any kind of avoidable disruptive weather- even snow at Christmas- could become viewed in the same way as fox-hunting is today, and anyone who deliberately made it snow at Christmas could be legally responsible for any resulting deaths to the elderly and fragile.

[Coast]

Already got a thread started here, I'll move it across in a while and then merge it later!

http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/70882-can-we-control-the-weather/

[Styx]

They use a substance called silver iodide to seed clouds to make it rain in Tasmania's west, to fill the hydro electric dams, which we wholly rely upon for our electricity supply in Tas.

Unfortuently there are constant stuff ups, with torrential rain falling in places that rely on tourism for income stream, and convincing evidence that the midlands district is becoming drier as a result of this fiddling around with nature in the west. The midlands is largely agricultural.

Just one example of how manipulating nature can have domino effects, cut one interconnection and there are reprucusions.

It is so arrogant that we feel we can play around with such powerful natural forces.

[Evening thunder]

Simply no, for many of the reasons stated in previous posts. If they 'controlled' the weather, much of my interest in it would probably be forced to wane, and would there be much point of having a weather station etc if it doesn't record much 'interesting' weather and the only stuff it does is effected/made by humans.

Thankfully I can't see that level of weather control being possible any time soon, how they could actively shift weather north/south or completely stop it, and know exactly what it's going to do before they do their operations, I don't know. Also if they wanted to stop convective weather/thunderstorms, some continental areas like parts of the USA and to an extent parts of Europe rely on this convective rainfall for a significant amount of their summer rain, and I don't know how they could 'make' replacement frontal systems covering 100's of miles, especially in continental areas. It would probably even make a notable difference to the UK's rain totals. They could probably only do 'cloud seeding' that could also increase convective rainfall intensity.

Though if climate change got really bad with a few degrees of warming or more, I wouldn't necessarily be against a method to bring the temps back down again, as this would probably save many species/lives and other things on earth, and would only be reducing the impact of our out of control "climate control" from greenhouse gases.