WMOD00464

• Title: The Management of Weather Resources - Volume II
• Prepared For: The Weather Modification Advisory Board
• Date: 6/30/1978
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

FOREWORD

The Weather Modification Advisory Board was appointed in May 1977 by Secnetary of
,Commerce Juanita Kreps, to help her fulfill a mandate from the Congress (in the: National
Weather Modification Policy Act of 1976, P.L. 94-490) to "conduct a comprehensive investiga-
tion and study of the state of scientific knowledge concerning weather modification, the present
state of development of weather modification technology, the problems in impeding, t~ffective
implementation of weather modification technology, and other matters." This study was,
Congress declared, "to develop a comprehensive and coordinated national weather modification
policy and a national program of weather modification research and development .,.."

The Advisory Board's findings and policy recommendations, together with thle analysis
that supports them, are contained in Volume I of its Final Report; The Management of Weather
Resources,' Proposals for a National Policy and Program, dated June 30, 1978. In sketchy sum-
mary, we concluded that:

. It will soon be possible to influence the weather more reliably and in a much greater
variety of ways; how soon depends on how hard men and women work at developing a
body of knowledge that is still only a generation old, and testing unproved technologies in
field experiments.

. It seems probable that a much intensified and steady program of scientific inquiry over the
next two decades will yield regionally-important increases in mountain snowpack in the
1980s, increased rainfall in areas like our High Plains and Midwest by the late 1980s,
reduced hurricane winds and hail damage by the 1990s. The margins of man-produced
weather change would be 10 to 30% increases for snow and rain, wind reduction of 10 to
20% in certain hurricanes, and hail reduction up to 60% in some kinds of storms.

. The case for hastening progress along these lines is very strong. The ec<;>nomic benefits of
delivering more water in the right places -- for farming, including irrigated crops, for
hydroelectric power and' for municipal and industrial water supply -- seem very likely to
outweigh the costs by impressive amounts. Large benefits, especially to aviation, can
come from dissipating fog on command. Population growth and migration are multiplying
the number of persons at risk from hurricanes and other severe storms. If thle damage
from the weather's occasional fury can be mitigated, the people at risk will insist that the
effort be made.

. The public interest requires that deliberate changes in the atmosphere bc~ designed and
carried out with environmental prudence and after consultation with the people m<;>st
likely to be affected.

. A national policy of weather resources management must start by learning muclh more
about the atmosphere. The centerpiece of our recommendations is, therefore, a 20-year
research-and-development effort.

A key part of such a program has to be field experiments: computer simulations and.
laboratory testing are no match for the dynamic complexity of real clouds in a real sky,

The analysis of physical causes and effects is still the bottleneck in atmospheric science,
When rational man sets out to produce effects of his own, he is bound to use sltatistic:s -- "the
science of doing science" -- as a primary basis for judgments about what he accomplished, com-
pared with what would have happened if Nature had not been altered with a human purpose in
view. In the management of weather resources, therefore, statisticians and atmospheric scien-
tists -- and analysts of social and environmental impacts, too -- must work closely together to
decipher the consequences of human intervention,