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<br />1 INTRODUCTION <br /> <br />The pri nc i pa 1 water source for the agri cultura 1, domestic and <br />i ndustri a 1 requi rements of southern Al berta is the accumul ated wi nter snowpack <br />on the eastern, slopes of the Rocky Mounta ins. Thi s water resource provi des the <br />means for the significant irrigation agriculture of this region. Its continued <br />supply is essential to the future economic development and environmental <br />quality of the South Saskatchewan River Basin. <br /> <br />Due to the natural variabil ity of the water supply and the increasing <br />rates of water usage, primarily for irrigation, the future demands for water in <br />the South Saskatchewan River Basin may not be satisfactorily fulfilled. The <br />potential shortage of water is particularly acute for the Oldman River <br />sub-basin which currently has over 600,000 irrigated acres, and a potential for <br />over 1,300,000 i rri gated acres (Envi ronment Council of Alberta, 1982). Thi s <br />paper discusses the possibility of increasing this water supply by augmenting <br />the mountain snowpack at higher elevations. <br /> <br />The Alberta Research Council (ARC) has conducted a preliminary project <br />to examine the feasibility of supplementing this snowpack through the <br />controll ed use of cl oud-seedi ng techni ques. Thi s projects I aim was to measure <br />and analyze the precipitation processes of the snow-producing orographic <br />clouds. The project study area (Figure 1) straddles the continental divide <br />(Alberta-British Columbia border) and includes the Oldman River basin. <br /> <br />The Alberta Research Council has conducted some preliminary research <br />into the feasibility of applying snow augmentation techniques to the southern <br />Canadian Rockies. This limited initial effort has focused on providing <br />background information on the snow climate and winter cloud characteristics <br />within the area. The purpose of the climatological study is to provide general <br />information on the snow regime within the project area (Barlow, et al., 1983). <br />In addition, an instrumented research aircraft is being used to document the <br />characteri st i cs of wi nter clouds and to assess the effi c i ency of the wi nter <br />cloud systems to determine if a potential "seeding window" exists (Renick et <br />al., 1979). This summary will note some of the key findings of these aircraft <br />measurements. <br /> <br />1.1 FIELD PROGRAM <br /> <br />The principle component of the ARC snow research effort to date has <br />been the in-situ measurement of cloud characteristics. To this end, the <br />INTERA/ARC Cloud Physics research aircraft was used in March 1982 and three <br />subsequent periodS to measure the properties of clouds over the southern <br />rockies. This research has concentrated only on documenting the characteristics <br />of natural clouds and no cloud seeding has been conducted. Research flights <br />were made on a total of 29 days with a combined flight time of over 100 hours. <br />Significant cloud cover was unfortunately rare during these field periods, but <br />measurements withi n orographi c cloud systems, were made on seven (7) fl i ght <br />days. <br /> <br />,,1 <br />~ <br />I <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />50 <br />