Scientific Weather Modification History of the Problem

It is clear that mankind always tried to improve their environment whatever and wherever
people lived.
In antique times, attempts to change weather were expressed in superstition-
religious form.
In ancient Greece (Naturales quaestiones by Seneca), performance of
religious duties, needed to prevent losses because of hail, was entrusted to special
responsible persons appointed by the state.
As a fee, they received from population a live-stock and meal.
Hail watchmen must have sent hail-bearing clouds in a safe direction, i.e.
to the sea or mountains.
When they failed a punishment was inevitable.

Since prayers of saint fathers were not successful, already the very first Rome Code
«Twelve Tables» prohibited using of the superstitious ways of a fight against hail.

However, helpless people watching destruction of fields and gardens attempted to try any
available means.
For many years people set all the bells ringing and exhibited tables with
prayers.
In 789, Charles (Karl) the Great forbade to ring the bells and to expose the tables.

Initial shooting to clouds with arrows was later replaced by gun and riffle shots and firing
from guns and mortars after the gunpowder was invented.
In 1789, Austrian empress Maria Terezia, receiving many complaints for evil-minded
direction of hail clouds, ordered to find out if any use was received from similar fights against
hail.
Answers from different regions of the Empire were contradictory but they mostly contained
requests for permission to continue the shooting and ringing.
Despite that, in 1750, the shooting was strictly prohibited throughout the whole Austrian
Empire, but even stern measures did not stop attempts to suppress hails far away from the
capital, and the shooting was going on.
Since in other countries of the Central and South Europe no veto existed, people there
continued to shoot the hail clouds.

It is clear that these measures had no scientific bases, and the science of XVIII century was
not able to create any basis for the weather modification.
It may be thought that a real history of the weather modification began in 1772 when the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences declared a prize for any successful way to change weather
according to a human need.

In 1886, the Austrian Empire started scientific experiments for anti-hail shooting at the
large scale.
At that time, over the whole Europe (Austria, North Italy, Switzerland, France)
the anti-hail shooting from big mortars up to 4 m long was spread.
Already in 1900, the shooting from 10 000 mortars was done just in Italy alone. During the
period from 1899 to 1920, six international congresses were held to discuss problems of the
anti-hail struggle.
At the congress of 1902, the decision was made to ask governments of Italy and Austria to
assign funds for long-lasting and decisive experiments.
They were completed in 1906, and the results were considered negative in Italy and Austria,
although the experiments carried out did not give definite answer in France.

At the same time, other possible mechanisms (mechanical, sonic, electric) to suppress hail
by bombs and rockets were discussed in details.
Chemical effects of the bombs and rockets were considered too, and it was estimated how
the explosion products may become nuclei of condensation.

Fighting against a hail logically suggested a possibility to fight against an adverse weather
in general, and, in particular, against droughts. American general Pauers in his book «War
and Weather» described 137 great battles after which in one or two days a rain occurred.

Although statistics estimated the data presented in Pauers’ book as failing to prove, in
1981, the USA government assigned funds for experiments to generate a rain by
explosions.
Three types of means were tested which are: air balloons filled with a fire-damp
gas; bombs filled with dynamite which were lifted by kites and exploded near the ground
with great amount of explosives containing the potassium chloride.
Heads of the
expeditions reported on successful results, but meteorologists considered them as the
nullity. After 1982, these experiments were never repeated, and only in 1909, similar
attempts were tried in New Zealand.
Certainly, experiments aimed at a solution of the problem of artificial rain generation were
connected with one or other idea on a nature of the atmospheric precipitation.
American experiments were based upon the suggestion that particles from the explosions
are nuclei of condensation, and the sonic waves make small cloud droplets to merge and,
thus, to form rain drops.
Perhaps, American scientists underestimated the air warming caused by intensive
explosions.
Still in 1837, the American meteorologist Prof. J. P. Espy proposed the idea of
a possibility to stimulate development of the convective clouds by a heat energy release,
e.g., by burning a wood.
On the contrary, Prof. A. Macfarlane proposed to drop the cloud
temperature instead of its rising.
Increase of the temperature vertical gradient up to unstable state of the medium causes
vertical flows, and, finally, precipitation, and the amount obtained depends on a degree of
the temperature drop in upper layers.
A. Macfarlane proposed to reduce the air temperature at high levels by evaporation of liquid
carbonic acid.
However, both above approaches in the stable atmosphere required expenditures much
greater than a cost of additional yield achieved.
In the past, considerable attention was given to verification of the hypothesis that a change
of the atmosphere electric state can make effect on precipitation and a hail generation.
At the end of XVIII and beginning of XIX centuries, a wide spreading of lightning rods in
Europe was followed by repeated attempts to use the rods as hail rods.
Different types of the hail rods were proposed, but using of them to fight against a hail
proved to be useless.

In 1893, famous physicist F. Arrago suggested to reduce a difference of the potentials by

means of lifting kites or balloons with conducting wires.
In 1893, A. Baudouin hoisted
kites with conducting rope up to height 1200 m and asserted that in such cases a fog was
generated and rain drops precipitated.
However, numerous experiments in other countries could not obtain convincing arguments in
support of this method.
In 1910, at a meeting of the International Association for Science Development in Shephild
(Great Britain), when a problem regarding the electrization influence upon a weather was
discussed, well-known physicist J. J. Thomson reported that, according to his calculations a
moderate amount of electricity is sufficient to modify the weather over a large area.
Now, we know that, in the past, great scientists sometimes made mistakes in their estimates
and forecasts.
Many years of theoretical and experimental work were taken to create nowadays
notions of the atmospheric electricity and to estimate realistically its influence upon the
weather and climate.
And only at the beginning of XX century, basic researches of great scientists
A. Vegener, T. Bergeron and U. Findeisen created scientific basis for
development of the weather modification methods.

First field experiments for cloud

seeding were carried out as early as in the 1930s.
Since the beginning of XX century, problems of weather modification were actively
discussed and developed in Europe, and a number of symposiums were hold.
But, it was only during the last 40 or 50 years, that developing of techniques for intentional
artificial modification of weather processes has become one of important branches of
sciences on the atmosphere.

Different means for active weather modification (WM) were suggested to modify clouds
and fogs via artificial enlargement of cloud particles up to the precipitable sizes.
Attempts to introduce water droplets or some hygroscopic particles
into clouds were also undertaken.
The means finding the widest use are those when certain reactants (agents) are introduced
into super cooled areas of clouds to produce their crystallization.
Experiments in which some crystallizing agents were introduced into a cloud demonstrated
the most successful results.
Below, the physical basis of this technique is outlined.
It should be noted that the very first successful experiments in active modification of natural
clouds were undertaken in 1931 by the Dutch physicist A. Feraart, who used dry carbon
dioxide (CO2) as the icing agent.

Quite a long background of studies is known to search ways for active cloud modification
in the former USSR. In 1921, V.I. Vitchevich conducted a series of laboratory experiments
in enlarging fine water droplets by charged sand and tried to develop a theory to
substantiate this technique.
A technique for artificial cloud modification was created in a specially founded Moscow
Institute of Artificial Rain, headed by S.L. Bastamov.

In 1931, a department of that Institute was later transformed into the Leningrad Institute of
Experimental Meteorology (LIEM), its main goal was to develop preventive means against
droughts. In this institute, studies on problems of the artificial weather modification were
headed by Professor V.K Obolenskii, an eminent scientist of that time.
Regretfully, the Second World War had temporarily broken off these studies.

In 1946, V. Sheffer and E. Langmuir conducted successful experiments in the USA in

dispersing a fog in a freezing camera.
They introduced particles of solid CO2 into it, thus actually repeating the Feraart
experiments for a cloud dispersal.
B. Vonneghut (1946) suggested the use of silver iodide (AgI) as such agent, its particles
playing the role of crystallizing centers, or nuclei,
serving a center for further growth of the ice crystals.

Starting from the end of the 1940s, development a new technique for active cloud
modification, as one of the means for intentional control of atmospheric processes, found
increasingly wide support in the former USSR, the US, Israel, and some other countries.
WM was first primarily aimed at dispersal of fogs, stratiform clouds and stimulating a
precipitation.

In 1958, experts from Central Aerological Observatory (CAO) of the Russian

Hydrometeorological Service together with those from the Institute of Geophysics of the
Academy of Sciences of the former Georgian SSR started developing the hail-suppression
techniques.

These studies resulted in a practically feasible technique for hail suppression,

aimed at protection of valuable agricultural crops.
As a result, it became possible to start systematic hail suppression programs in the former
USSR for protection of various crops, grapevines, first of all.

Initiated in 1961, such service is still operating in various regions of the Caucasus,
the Crimea, Moldavia, Central Asia countries, and the South of the European Russia (former
USSR).
Such operations are carried out also in some countries of South America, and others.