WMOD00398

• Project Name: Project Skywater
• Title: Precipitation Management and the Environment - An Overview of the Skywater IX Conference
• Date: 9/1/1977
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

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FREQUENCY OF PRECIPITATION IN A GIVEN YEAR LESS THAN A GIVEN AMOUNT

Figure 8.-Example of expected change in frequency of annual precipitation amounts less than given amounts under
natural and precipitation-managed regimes. Based on 1875-1974 annual precipitation amounts at Dodge City, Kans.

precipitation management to be entirely discounted. There are no current indications of a radical
change in the rate of progress toward widespread, prolonged application, and extrapolation of the
current rate of progress would stretch the phase of adoption over many decades. During this
time, many social and environmental adjustments to its use would occur.
The following six issues are laid before the Skywater IX Workshop as thematic material for
guidance, not instruction. How. the Division of Atmospheric Water Resources Management uses
the resources available to it for research on environmental impacts is and will remain i~s
undivided responsibility. We have called this conference, not to shift that responsibility, but it.
recognition of the great contribution that informed and impartial advice can make in guiding us
toward wise decisions, or at least in helping us to avoid foolish ones.
We hope that discussion of these issues will range as widely as necessary to encompass
significant viewpoints, but that they will, in general, be limited to the context of precipitation
management, realistically perceived. We hope that other issues will be raised, in the same context,
if they appear pertinent.
We hope that, with so many good shoulders to the wheel, and by keeping the prize clearly in
sight, we can resolve all the issues presented before the conference concludes. Where resolution is
not achieved, we shall seek to determine what is lacking, the supplying of which would bring .!
about a resolution, and plan to remedy the lack.

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