My WebLink
|
Help
|
About
|
Sign Out
Home
Browse
Search
WMOD00572
CWCB
>
Weather Modification
>
DayForward
>
WMOD00572
Metadata
Thumbnails
Annotations
Entry Properties
Last modified
7/28/2009 2:41:03 PM
Creation date
4/24/2008 2:57:13 PM
Metadata
Fields
Template:
Weather Modification
Title
Status of Precipitation Augmentation and Hail Suppression Experiments
Date
2/20/1990
Weather Modification - Doc Type
Report
There are no annotations on this page.
Document management portal powered by Laserfiche WebLink 9 © 1998-2015
Laserfiche.
All rights reserved.
/
14
PDF
Print
Pages to print
Enter page numbers and/or page ranges separated by commas. For example, 1,3,5-12.
After downloading, print the document using a PDF reader (e.g. Adobe Reader).
Show annotations
View images
View plain text
<br />Printed January 30, 1990 <br /> <br />Ground-based generators on windward slopes were added for Israel II (Gagin and Neumann, <br />1981). The AMS (1984) statement noted that the apparently favorable statistical results, amounting <br />to roughly a 15 percent increase in target-area rainfall, enjoyed "general acceptance." However, <br />recent reanalyses of the Israeli data by Gabriel and Rosenfeld (1989) have raised serious questions <br />about the statistical analyses. Their concern is that, while both projects were designed as <br />randomized crossover experiments, the analysis of Israel II results by Gagin and Neumann (1981) <br />used a target-control design and was applied to the north target area only. Statistical analysis of <br />Israel II results according to the original design does not confirm the favorable results: of IsraelI. <br />Furthermore, Rangno (1988) has pointed out that, contrary to the claims made in Gagin and <br />Neumann (1974), natural rain does fall in Israel from clouds with top temperatures warmer than <br />_lOoC, suggesting that natural precipitation processes are quite efficient, at least in some storms. <br /> <br />The best known randomized experiments in this country to test effects of seeding of convective <br />clouds upon area rainfall were the Florida Area Cumulus Experiments (FACE-l and FACE-2). <br />The experimental design emphasized dynamic effects, which were to be produced by heavy seeding <br />with silver iodide pyrotechnics dropped from aircraft. Typically, 10 to 20 pyrotechnics, each <br />containing 50 g or more of silver iodide, were dropped into each treated cloud. Although much <br />effort went into the experimental design of FACE, including numerical cloud modeling and <br />laboratory testing of the silver iodide pyrotechnics used, and some cloud physics data were collected, <br />the main emphasis remained on statistical analysis of precipitation data. FACE-1 gave some <br />promising indications of areal rainfall increases, but FACE-2 failed to confirm for either the fixed <br />target area or for smaller floating targets incorporating the clouds actually seeded each day <br />(Woodley et a1., 1983). Its failure to obtain definitive answers is an indication of the need for a <br />more comprehensive, engineering approach to convective cloud seeding for precipitation <br />augmentation. <br /> <br />One of the first experiments on convective clouds to take full advantage of the particle-measuring <br />probes was HIPLEX-l. HIPLEX-l was conducted in southeastern Montana. It was built around <br />a specific, detailed hypothesis of the sequence of events that should follow the introduction of dry <br />ice into carefully chosen, supercooled cumulus congestus clouds of the northern Great Plains (Smith <br />et aI., 1984). According to the hypothesis, the dry ice would produce numerous ice crystals, some <br />of which would grow into graupel by deposition of water vapor followed by riming. The graupel <br />particles would then melt into raindrops during their fall from cloud base to the ground. Because <br />the target clouds had low concentrations of supercooled water, dynamic effects were expected to <br />be negligible. <br /> <br />Following some preliminary trials, randomized seeding was carried out during the summers of 1979 <br />and 1980, with 20 test clouds being recorded. Test clouds were selected on the basis of cloud <br />physics data collected on a pre-treatment pass by an instrumented aircraft, analyzed by an on- <br />board computer, and displayed to the flight scientist. It was anticipated that ice crystals would be <br />detectable within 2 minutes of seeding, that some rimed crystals would appear in about 5 minutes, <br />and that graupel particles would be present 8 to 10 minutes after seeding. Response variables, <br />derived from aircraft and radar observations following treatment, were objectively defined to reflect <br />the expected hydrometeor development (Smith et a1., 1984). <br /> <br />8 <br />
The URL can be used to link to this page
Your browser does not support the video tag.