Modify weather carefully

The thunderstorm that occurred last Friday during the Ukraine vs. France soccer match could have been reduced to some extent, at least in Donetsk. Back in the 1960s the Ukrainian Hydro Meteorological Research Institute developed technologies to modify clouds and fogs. This is done by means of rockets or special aircraft that spray special reagents into or above the cloud (if the latter is extremely dangerous, as was the one over Donetsk).

Thanks to this technology, the Luna 9 spacecraft successfully landed on the Moon in 1966 and brought us samples of the lunar soil. The Luna 9 veered off the right trajectory, and the Simeiz observatory, which monitored it, was covered by the clouds. It was extremely important to land the Luna 9 on the Moon. Specially-equipped weather aircraft “hovered” over the observatory for two nights and “opened” it.

Also in the 1960s and 1970s, specialized aircraft “cleared” hundreds of airfields to receive planes and helped modify the clouds, thus transforming hailstorms into moisture. This in turn helped increase crops.

Unfortunately, these technologies are almost not being applied in Ukraine, for the state is interested neither in increasing the crops, nor in creating favorable conditions over airfields, nor in protecting fields from hailstorms and the populated areas form tornadoes. For the cloud-modification technologies also reduce the probability of tornadoes (which have been on the rise in Ukraine and the rest of the world over the past few years). This results in the loss of the unique equipment (aircraft) and personnel.

Ukraine invoked this technology on May 9, 2010, when the 65th anniversary of World War II victory was celebrated. On Viktor Yanukovych’s orders, three aircrafts of the Defense Ministry’s special-purpose air brigade dispersed what specialists called “super-powerful system of frontal clouds” by using solid-state carbon dioxide. Incidentally, these were conventional planes because the specialized ones had already been sold.

Academics say that dispersing clouds during a celebration is a baby’s toy in comparison to the benefit the national economy can derive from this. For example, a weather modification specialist has said that Transcarpathia, where vineyards are wiped out from year to year, can be saved from hailstorms if a radar and a network of rocket launching sites are deployed. The hailstorm protection system will cost an annual one or two million dollars, but this will produce a far greater economic effect – there will be no losses to vineyards, orchards, and wheat that is grown there. The world experience shows that the effectiveness of hailstorm protection is 1:7 on the average. There is also an additional side effect: the overflows that result from the anti-hailstorm technology increase precipitation by 27 percent, which is very important for, say, southern Ukraine.

Borys LIESKOV, Candidate of Sciences (Geography); Senior Research Associate, Atmospheric Physics Department, Ukrainian Hydro Meteorological Research Institute affiliated with the Ministry for the Emergencies and the National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine:

“Some media reported on the eve of Euro-2012 that Ukraine would be launching rockets to disperse clouds during the matches. No, we were not assigned a task like this. Nobody requested us to do this, although we have developed a lot of technologies, including some unique techniques that are unmatched in the world but in fact remain unused.

“When the Ukraine vs. France match was playing, there was a cold atmospheric front over Donetsk, caused by a wave-like cyclonic formation in north-eastern Ukraine, which produced torrential rainfalls and hurricanes in Kharkiv, Poltava, and partially Donetsk oblasts. As a matter of fact, we could have done nothing to this front because the upper limit of convective thunderclouds exceeded 15 km. It is an extremely powerful and dangerous formation – it is forbidden to fly close to a cloud like this because it can ‘spit out’ the airplane piecemeal.

“But it is undoubtedly possible to modify this cloud. Donetsk was at some distance from this front, and if we had had special high-altitude aircraft that could climb to 10-12 km (which we had 20 years ago), we could have blown the steam out of this ‘cauldron’ and driven the moisture 70-80 km away in order to weaken the process over the target, Donetsk. This can produce the following effect: if this cloud is strong and can produce a hailstorm, the interference will cause it to form fine hailstones which will not reach the earth because they will melt in the warm layers of the atmosphere. This will increase precipitation by about a third in the areas where the planes will be ‘working.’ Meanwhile, the cloud will approach the object to be protected and give a small rainfall or even disperse altogether.

“Unfortunately, we do not have even a single specialized plane. During the May 9, 2010 parade, the job was done by a Defense Ministry special-purpose brigade based in Boryspil. The planes were not specialized, but we still managed to spray such a reagent as solid-state carbon dioxide (iodine silver can be also used). If CO2 is sprayed from an airplane (the temperature of this CO2 is minus 96oC) in granules 0.5-1 cm in diameter, a low-temperature field (minus 96oC to minus 45oC) is formed around a granule. An abrupt temperature fall produces a host of small water drops which freeze in a sub-40.5oC area and become nuclei of a glacial phase. When they fall still lower – into a milieu with a temperature of minus 10-15 degrees, they continue to absorb the steam-like moisture. This results in a condition when drops evaporate in the cloud, while the nuclei of crystals grow and fall out of the cloud. They melt in the lower layers of clouds, where there is an above-zero temperature in the summer, and result in a rainfall. But if the whole cloud had a temperature lower than minus 4 Celsius, it will also rain.

“The cloud-dispersal technology should be applied not only during celebrations to create comfortable conditions: it should be also used on a commercial scale to clear the sky over airfields in a cold season and over observatories. For example, there are situations on the Donetsk Ridge or in Podillia, when it is foggy for weeks in the winter (this happened, for example, in 1993). In this case, power supply lines and trees get frosted and lines tear, and then hundreds and thousands of kilometers of these lines must be restored. This causes extremely heavy losses, with the populated areas remaining without electricity for a long time. This can be forestalled by dispelling the fog. In the 1960s and 1970s, our method of dispersing clouds helped Soviet airfields to receive and clear thousands of airplanes. Dispersals were regularly carried out in Moscow, Kyiv, Minsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Sverdlovsk, Alma-Ata, and Khabarovsk. They were so effective that every invested ruble returned a profit of five rubles.

“Unfortunately, nobody needs weather modification now. Now we can apply technologies only to some extent because no funds are made available for technical maintenance of the aircraft (we practically don’t have any) and for personnel training – why do we need the personnel if nobody applies the technology? If conditions were created for us to update the technologies, we would do so within 2-3 or maximum 5 years and could even surpass the potential we used to have. But in the next 5-10 years, until the pioneers of these technologies die, we will have to spend dozens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase the equipment and train the personnel.

“According to the World Meteorological Organization, weather modification is resorted to in 48 countries. The leader is China which spent 500 million dollars in 2003-05 alone in order to increase precipitation. This made it possible to get 210 billion cu. m. of water to be supplied to 400 million people. If Ukraine allocated sufficient funds for weather modification, the resulting profit would be at least five times as large as all the expenditures and could make up billions of hryvnias. The government of Ukraine should make a proper decision on this matter.”