Luzhkov Takes Snow Fight to the Sky | Business | The Moscow Times

Is this guy for real?

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So, now weather forcasts become more predictable and a less risky business?.

Isn't this what the Chinese have done for a while now, tried to manipulate the weather locally?.

I see a potential for exotic options and new financial instruments.

Interesting subject.

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"Mayor Yury Luzhkov is a long-time proponent of fighting clouds by spraying liquid nitrogen, silver, or cement particles into the cloud mass, which forces precipitation to fall before it can reach the capital and spoil holidays like Victory Day and City Day.
Last month, Luzhkov proposed expanding the technology to fight the snow drifts that snarl traffic every winter.
“What if we force this snow to fall beyond Moscow? The Moscow region will have more water, bigger harvests, while we will have less snow,” he said at an award ceremony for Moscow’s best-kept yard"


The liquid nitrogen will just boil off back into the atmosphere. But the silver and cement? Something tells me silver and cement can't be very good for corn and wheat fields?


And kgun, you are correct, the Chinese do attempt to seed clouds in an attempt to halt desertification. They do other things too including certain water and soil conservation efforts, but at the end of the day nothing beats a desert better than steady and predictable rainfall.

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That was why I wrote my comment. And what about forcing snow to fall in slalom hills / tracks?

"Slalom" from the Morgedal dialect of Norwegian slalåm: "sla," meaning slightly inclining hillside, and "låm," meaning track after skis.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slalom_skiing

This has the potential to be an industry. Financial instruments (derivative) have been issued where the underlying "commodity" is snowfall.

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Nothing new in the world - Russia diverted Chernobyl rain (The Sunday Times 8 August 2004)

A British scientist expelled from Belarus last week has claimed he was targeted because he spoke publicly about evidence that Russia used “rain technology” to make radioactive particles land there after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

James Cooke Coaching (Russia diverted Chernobyl rain)

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and -

Deadly flood blamed on RAF rainmakers

By Sally Pook
Published: 12:01AM BST 31 Aug 2001

THE heavy rainfall and flash floods that struck the Devon village of Lynmouth nearly 50 years ago, killing 35 people in a single night, may not have been a natural disaster, it was claimed yesterday.

Newly declassified documents have been produced to back suggestions that the RAF was involved in rainmaking exercises during the period that the floods took place.

Deadly flood blamed on RAF rainmakers - Telegraph

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It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Not only has she not been cooperative with regards to cloud seeding, she has a way of biting back that is wholly unpredictable.

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Fully agree.

I think it was Edward Norton Lorentz that first modelled the weather system with a three dimensional differential equation system:

"dx / dt = a (y - x)

dy / dt = x (b - z) - y

dz / dt = xy - c z

One commonly used set of constants is a = 10, b = 28, c = 8 / 3. Another is a = 28, b = 46.92, c = 4. "a" is sometimes known as the Prandtl number and "b" the Rayleigh
number.

The series does not form limit cycles nor does it ever reach a steady state. Instead it is an example of deterministic chaos. As with other chaotic systems the Lorenz system is sensitive to the initial conditions, two initial states no matter how close will diverge, usually sooner rather than later".

with a chaotic solution (the Lorenz attractopr) It is fairly easy to produce that attractor on a computer screen (see the C source code in that article).

As with other chaotic systems the Lorenz system is sensitive to the initial conditions also known as the butterfly wing effect. (Click in the window to start a Lorentz Butterfly.)

So, will it in the future be possible to manipulate the wheather system by using knowledge about that system and identify sensitive regions that can be manipulated by a little heat / ice (from nature)? What about more rain in Sahara and less in ...

Generally it is too early to know the future.

Link for those that love mathematics: Lorenz Attractor -- from Wolfram MathWorld

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All too often, mankind gets excited because he's figured out a way to control something, that was previously uncontrollable. He then proceeds to play with it, like a kid with a hammer, without a thought to the consequences.

Causing precipitation of any sort, in a region that typically receives less, means that potential precipitation is being stolen from some other area. Forcing rain, rather than snow, means more water NOW, and less LATER, with the melt. So the Spring will be faced with drier soil, meaning less agricultural yield, not just locally, but in the entire run-off area.

Dry river beds are not conducive to a lot of growth.

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Equally important, initiating a reaction, and having the result occur when and where desired, are two quite different matters.

In this case, inducing condensation will not necessarily yield precipitation of the desired form, at the desired location, and/or at the desired rate, as seeding does not alter any of the other variables involved, such as air temperatures/gradients, air density/gradients , saturation levels, or wind velocities.

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And this is just the simple case of the movement of a given cell, one with static characteristics, in the system; in this case, of an volume of air of arbitrary size, fixed temperature, and fixed mixture of constituents!

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Agree

One idea is to try to turn a disadvantage (locally) into an advantage. A more even distribution of rain can be a great advantage. The technology to do it is not available today, but that situation can change in the future. It must first be available very locally, without increased pollution.

Example:

1. Norway emerges as champion of rainforest conservation
2. Welcome to Rain Forest, Norway

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Agreed, that it can be an advantage, but ecosystems develop over a long period of time, and sudden changes will often have detrimental effects to some portion of the system. Those effects usually will cascade into other areas, causing major problems. Careful consideration is required, to avoid incurring Mother Nature's wrath.

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Relax, I know what I'm doing. Five ways to trigger a natural disaster - environment - 29 July 2008 - New Scientist

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The one area that fascinates me is the Atacama. Driest place on earth. Rain Shadowed by the Andes, naturally it has the ocean nearby and plenty of sunlight. I always wondered if that would be possible, use solar power to desalinate the water and turn the Atacama into an agricultural breadbasket. The same could be said of the Sahara except there are parts of it that are very far away from any water source.

Turning these regions into the equivalent of the Imperial Valley would be no small feat, but it at least seems possible.

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No small feat indeed, as desalinization is energy intensive.

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Conventional desalinization is energy intensive. RO systems aren't, and they're about equal in capital cost.

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No problem.

It is an economic problem and a decision crisis. This primate prioritizes otherwise. Sometimes, I think that the only thing that can make positive development and evolution to this beautiful planet (nothing more than a big space ship) is an outside threat and / or increased problems related to global warming (pollution) so we all can (have to) join forces.

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Sadly, you may well be correct, Kjell. Personally, I believe that man's contribution to global warming is probably less than 1%; it is mostly caused by a natural cycle. Nonetheless, we have got to stop poisoning the planet, polluting the water, killing off species and raping the countryside. If convincing people that global warming is our fault, and that it has to be reversed, or ELSE, maybe that's the way to go.

Whatever gets folks' attention, I suppose.

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While less energy intensive that phase change systems, their energy requirements are still quite substantial. For sea water, pump pressures in excess of 800 psi are required.

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"Israel is now desalinating water at a cost of US$0.53 per cubic meter.[16] Singapore is desalinating water for US$0.49 per cubic meter.[17]"

264.2 gallons per cubic meter of water.

Black & Veatch-Designed Desalination Plant Wins Global Water Distinction

"The Singapore-Tuas Seawater Desalination plant is one of the most energy-efficient SWRO plants in the world, producing treated water at a total energy consumption for the plant of only 4.2kWhr/m3. This has resulted in an expected first-year selling price of $0.49 per cubic meter - the lowest of any comparable project in the world."

Tuas Seawater Desalination Plant - Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) - Water Technology

"
Plant type
Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO)
Output capacity
136,380m³/d"

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I believe, on average, the US consumed about 160 gallons per day (if I'm wrong let me know, I'm more than willing to stand corrected on that one)

136,380 cubic meters 264.2 gallons/m3 36031596 gallons 160 requirement 225197.475 population

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Pretty impressive! Now, let's hope they have the good sense to not dump the effluent back into the sea, and kill their own golden goose!

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Well, if you're desalinating water, wouldn't it make sense to sell the salt as a byproduct?

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Sure! But the fact that it makes sense, doesn't necessarily play.

I would just hope that they will be prohibited from dumping it back into the sea, should it be too little profit, too much trouble, or too sensible to sell it.

B&V is a fairly sophisticated engineering house, so I'm sure they've considered the ramifications. Sea salt is a fairly lucrative market.

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Presumably that would depend on 1) the totality of waste products, and 2) the cost to separate.

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We are going round and round with this one.
Methane mining could trigger killer gas cloud - environment - 15 September 2009 - New Scientist
NB: Perhaps the most dangerous practice is pumping waste water into the lake's shallows.

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As usual, short term gains trump long term consequences.

Flashback - The Club of Rome had it right.

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Indeed and it can be used in energy production. I think Israel has desalted water for a long time to grow plants in the desert. So

1. It is possible to transform a desert.
2. It seems more important to fight over resources than preserve existing and make new ones.
3. As already stated, it is an economic problem and and a decision issue.

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I can't tell you how many times we discuss something here and I wind up seeing a program on TV regarding a similar topic. Yesterday the program on TV was China: Raging Sands and it discussed the increasing problem of desertification in NW China, Xinjiang through Inner Mongolia, causing some intense sand storms in Beijing.

Of course the ultimate solution to a desert is water, but the problem is that they are pumping water out of the ground and they have to go deeper and deeper (the deeper they go the saltier the water gets there apparently) until the water itself isn't potable for human consumption, but can be used for agriculture (for a couple of years anyway) until the salt accumulation in the soil is such that vegetation can no longer grow.

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