Cloud Seeding

Why in the News?

Recently, China and Middle East countries plan to lead the effort to seed clouds and increase precipitation.

Key Points:

About Cloud Seeding:

• Cloud seeding is an artificial way of inducing moisture in the clouds to cause rainfall.
• Only certain kind of clouds can be seeded and it needs to have enough nuclei to process cloud seeding and thunder cloud development.
• It uses silver iodide and dry ice to improve the creation of ice crystals in clouds.
• It involves using aircraft or drones to add small particles of silver iodide.

Benefits of Cloud Seeding:

• Create more winter snowfall
• Enhance the natural water supply to communities
• Lessen hailstorms by reordering water vapor in clouds, which breaks down large hailstones