Quantifying snowfall from orographic cloud seeding

Climate change and population growth have increased demand for water in arid regions. For over half a century, cloud seeding has been evaluated as a technology to increase water supply; statistical approaches have compared seeded to nonseeded events through precipitation gauge analyses. Here, a physically based approach to quantify snowfall from cloud seeding in mountain cloud systems is presented. Areas of precipitation unambiguously attributed to cloud seeding are isolated from natural precipitation (<1 mm h−1). Spatial and temporal evolution of precipitation generated by cloud seeding is then quantified using radar observations and snow gauge measurements. This study uses the approach of combining radar technology and precipitation gauge measurements to quantify the spatial and temporal evolution of snowfall generated from glaciogenic cloud seeding of winter mountain cloud systems and its spatial and temporal evolution. The results represent a critical step toward quantifying cloud seeding impact. For the cases presented, precipitation gauges measured increases between 0.05 and 0.3 mm as precipitation generated by cloud seeding passed over the instruments. The total amount of water generated by cloud seeding ranged from 1.2 × 105 m3 (100 ac ft) for 20 min of cloud seeding, 2.4 × 105 m3 (196 ac ft) for 86 min of seeding to 3.4 x 105 m3 (275 ac ft) for 24 min of cloud seeding.

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Wintertime Orographic Cloud Seeding—A Review

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology ◽

10.1175/jamc-d-18-0341.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 58 (10) ◽

pp. 2117-2140 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Robert M. Rauber ◽

Bart Geerts ◽

Lulin Xue ◽

Jeffrey French ◽

Katja Friedrich ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Supercooled Water ◽

Mountain Range ◽

Target Area ◽

Cloud Seeding ◽

Cloud Systems ◽

The Past ◽

Precipitation Efficiency ◽

Focus On Results ◽

Orographic Cloud ◽

Modern Instrumentation

AbstractThis paper reviews research conducted over the last six decades to understand and quantify the efficacy of wintertime orographic cloud seeding to increase winter snowpack and water supplies within a mountain basin. The fundamental hypothesis underlying cloud seeding as a method to enhance precipitation from wintertime orographic cloud systems is that a cloud’s natural precipitation efficiency can be enhanced by converting supercooled water to ice upstream and over a mountain range in such a manner that newly created ice particles can grow and fall to the ground as additional snow on a specified target area. The review summarizes the results of physical, statistical, and modeling studies aimed at evaluating this underlying hypothesis, with a focus on results from more recent experiments that take advantage of modern instrumentation and advanced computation capabilities. Recent advances in assessment and operations are also reviewed, and recommendations for future experiments, based on the successes and failures of experiments of the past, are given.

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Review of Advances in Precipitation Enhancement Research

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society ◽

10.1175/bams-d-18-0160.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 100 (8) ◽

pp. 1465-1480 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Andrea I. Flossmann ◽

Michael Manton ◽

Ali Abshaev ◽

Roelof Bruintjes ◽

Masataka Murakami ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Convective Cloud ◽

Cloud Seeding ◽

Weather Modification ◽

Catchment Scale ◽

Cloud Systems ◽

The Past ◽

Expert Team ◽

Orographic Cloud ◽

Water Catchment ◽

Precipitation Enhancement

AbstractThis paper provides a summary of the assessment report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Expert Team on Weather Modification that discusses recent progress on precipitation enhancement research. The progress has been underpinned by advances in our understanding of cloud processes and interactions between clouds and their environment, which, in turn, have been enabled by substantial developments in technical capabilities to both observe and simulate clouds from the microphysical to the mesoscale. We focus on the two cloud types most commonly seeded in the past: winter orographic cloud systems and convective cloud systems. A key issue for cloud seeding is the extension from cloud-scale research to water catchment–scale impacts on precipitation on the ground. Consequently, the requirements for the design, implementation, and evaluation of a catchment-scale precipitation enhancement campaign are discussed. The paper concludes by indicating the most important gaps in our knowledge. Some recommendations regarding the most urgent research topics are given to stimulate further research.

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Towards environmental Sustainability: Devolving the influence of carbon dioxide emission to population growth, climate change, Forestry, livestock and crops production in Pakistan

Ecological Indicators ◽

10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107460 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 125 ◽

pp. 107460

Author(s):

Abdul Rehman ◽

Hengyun Ma ◽

Munir Ahmad ◽

Muhammad Irfan ◽

Ousmane Traore ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Carbon Dioxide ◽

Population Growth ◽

Environmental Sustainability ◽

Carbon Dioxide Emission

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Wave-Powered Desalination

ASME 2015 Power Conference ◽

10.1115/power2015-49087 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Brian Stiber ◽

Asfaw Beyene

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Population Growth ◽

Wave Energy ◽

Specific Region ◽

Wave Power ◽

Wave Energy Conversion ◽

Coastal Regions ◽

Sustainable Resources ◽

Modeling Software ◽

The Cost

Climate change, drought, population growth and increased energy and water costs are all forces driving exploration into alternative, sustainable resources. The abundance of untapped wave energy often presents an opportunity for research into exploiting this resource to meet the energy and water needs of populated coastal regions. This paper investigates the potential and impact of harnessing wave energy for the purpose of seawater desalination. First the SWAN wave modeling software was used to evaluate the size and character of the wave resource. These data are used to estimate the cost of water for wave-powered desalination taking a specific region as a case example. The results indicate that, although the cost of water from this technology is not economically competitive at this time, the large available resource confirms the viability of significantly supplementing current freshwater supplies. The results also confirm that research into the feasibility of wave power as a source of energy and water in the area is warranted, particularly as water and energy become more scarce and expensive coinciding with the maturity of commercial wave energy conversion.

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