Bill Gates and Geoengineering

Research Finds 'Cloud Seeding' Doesn't Produce Rain

November 3, 2010

Physorg - In many areas of the world, including California's Mojave Desert, rain is a precious and rare resource. To encourage rainfall, scientists use "cloud seeding," a weather modification process designed to increase precipitation amounts by dispersing chemicals into the clouds.

But research now reveals that the common practice of cloud seeding with materials such as silver iodide and frozen carbon dioxide may not be as effective as it had been hoped. In the most comprehensive reassessment of the effects of cloud seeding over the past fifty years, new findings from Prof. Pinhas Alpert, Prof. Zev Levin and Dr. Noam Halfon of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences have dispelled the myth that seeding is an effective mechanism for precipitation enhancement.

The findings were recently reported in Atmospheric Research.

Throwing seeds into the wind

During the course of his study, Prof. Alpert and his colleagues looked over fifty years' worth of data on cloud seeding, with an emphasis on the effects of seeding on rainfall amounts in a target area over the Sea of Galilee in the north of Israel. The research team used a comprehensive rainfall database and compared statistics from periods of seeding and non-seeding, as well as the amounts of precipitation in adjacent non-seeded areas.

"By comparing rainfall statistics with periods of seeding, we were able to show that increments of rainfall happened by chance," says Prof. Alpert. "For the first time, we were able to explain the increases in rainfall through changing weather patterns" instead of the use of cloud seeding.

Most notable was a six year period of increased rainfall, originally thought to be a product of successful cloud seeding. Prof. Alpert and his fellow researchers showed that this increase corresponded with a specific type of cyclones which are consistent with increased rainfall over the mountainous regions. They observed that a similarly significant rain enhancement over the Judean Mountains, an area which was not the subject of seeding.

The researchers concluded that changing weather patterns were responsible for the higher amount of precipitation during these years. Their research method may be useful in the investigation of cloud seeding in the U.S. and other regions.

Considering the alternatives

Despite being relatively expensive, there are more than 80 cloud seeding projects around the world, according to a recent World Meteorological Organization report. In Beijing, China, for example, Prof. Alpert notes, a large amount of chemical particles were introduced to the clouds to inhibit precipitation ― a process called "overseeding" ― to limit rainfall during the 2008 Olympics. Seeding is also used in the Sierra Mountains of California and in Wyoming to try to increase precipitation in the mountains, thus increasing water levels in reservoirs. However, he says, there is no proof that this method is successful.

The only probable place where cloud seeding could be successful, Alpert says, is when seeding is performed on orographic clouds, which develop over mountains and have a short lifespan. In this type of cloud, seeding could serve to accelerate the formation of precipitation.

Bill Gates Funds Seawater Cloud Seeding, “the Most Benign Form of Geoengineering”

May 10, 2010

Discover Magazine - Bill Gates is getting serious about geoengineering. Back in January, after the failure of governments at the Copenhagen Climate Change summit to do anything serious, the billionaire former head of Microsoft announced he’s give nearly $5 million of his fortune to fund research into geoengineering projects. Recently he announced his first concrete foray into the field: giving $300,000 to project that would spray seawater into the sky, seeding clouds that would hopefully block some of the sun’s UV rays.

The machines, developed by a San Francisco-based research group called Silver Lining, turn seawater into tiny particles that can be shot up over 3,000 feet in the air. The particles increase the density of clouds by increasing the amount of nuclei contained within. Silver Lining’s floating machines can suck up ten tons of water per second. If all goes well, Silver Lining plans to test the process with 10 ships spread throughout 3800 square miles of ocean [Inhabitat].

Most of the major geoengineering ideas that have been proposed—launching a reflective shield into space, artificial trees to pull carbon dioxide out of the air—are extremely expensive and difficult.

However, a study last year calculated that a fleet of 1,900 ships costing £5 billion (about $7.5 billion) could arrest the rise in temperature by criss-crossing the oceans and spraying seawater from tall funnels to whiten clouds and increase their reflectivity [The Times].

Unlike, say, seeding the sea with iron, seawater spraying doesn’t involve dumping additional material into the environment, so it would require less arduous permit-getting to test. And as opposed to the plans to put particulates in the clouds, seawater spraying would be easier to shut down and wouldn’t affect weather patters for quite as long.

Armand Neukermanns, who is leading the research, said that whitening clouds was “the most benign form of engineering” because, while it might alter rainfall, the effects would cease soon after the machines were switched off [The Times].

With $4.5M of Pocket Change, Bill Gates Funds Geoengineering Research

January 29, 2010

Discover Magazine - If climate-watchers found no solutions in December’s failed Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, then they might be heartened by the fact that billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates thinks there needs to be a greater focus on researching technologies that can slow global warming.

ScienceInsider reports that the Microsoft founder had provided at least $4.5 million of his own money to be distributed over 3 years for the study of methods that could alter the stratosphere to reflect solar energy, techniques to filter carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, and brighten ocean clouds [Science Insider]. These and other geoengineering techniques have been hotly debated in the scientific world, with some critics arguing that tinkering with Earth’s natural systems could do more harm than good.

Methods that divert some incoming solar energy, like spraying reflective aerosols into the stratosphere or making clouds more reflective, have been deemed potentially effective but also risky; the abrupt halt of a large-scale project would result in sudden, extreme warming. On the other hand, techniques that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere are considered less risky, but they’re currently too expensive to implement widely.

Some of Gates’ money has been granted to Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto, California and physicist David Keith of the University of Calgary in Canada–two of Gates’ informal energy and climate advisers for many years. They have also advised Gates on dispensing the money, some of which has already been granted to Armand Neukermans, an inventor based in Silicon Valley who is working with colleagues to design spray systems for the marine clouds, and students and scientists working for Keith and Caldeira. Funding has also helped support scientific meetings in geoengineering in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Edinburgh, Scotland, and aeronautics research related to altering the stratosphere [Science Insider]. Caldeira clarified that Gates’ money had not funded any field experiments; he also noted that some of the funding goes to more general research on climate change.

Gates’ funding is in line with his recent essay on climate policy in which he called for radical innovations in electricity generation and transportation.

“If the goal is to get the transportation and electrical sectors down to zero emissions you clearly need innovation that leads to entirely new approaches to generating power,” Gates wrote. “While it is all well and good to insulate houses and turn off lights, to really solve this problem we need to spend more time on accelerating innovation” [Wired.com].

This is not the first time that Gates has shown an interest in geoengineering research. He is an investor in a Seattle, Washington-area firm called Intellectual Ventures that is investigating techniques to geoengineer the stratosphere. Gates worked with them to apply for a patent in 2008 to sap hurricanes of their strength by mixing warm surface water and with cold, deep ocean water.

While Gates’ $4.5 million contribution to climate change research is significant, it does pale in comparison to his other philanthropic efforts. Endorsing vaccines as the world’s most cost-effective public health measure, Bill and Melinda Gates said Friday that their foundation would more than double its spending on them over the next decade, to at least $10 billion [The New York Times].

Bill Gates Patents a Device Aimed at Halting Hurricanes