Why or why can’t we use cloud seeding to fight forest fires?

932 views

I recently learned that making man made clouds are a real thing that have been used to stave off droughts and that parts of China have been regularly using this tech. If so, can we use it to fight forest fires like the fires that have been so devastating in Australia? If not, why?

In: Chemistry

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There has to be sufficient moisture in the atmosphere for cloud seeding to work – e.g. there have to be rainclouds that just need a little coaxing to release their moisture as rain.

In the case of most serious forest fires they occur during the dry season where there are no clouds, or where the clouds are not sufficiently “wet” to be seeded with productive results.

Anonymous 0 Comments

” making man made clouds are a real thing ”

It’s not. Cloud seeding consists of sending certain stuff into the clouds that raindrops can coalesce around and so there’s a much higher chance it will start raining from those clouds. If there are no clouds overhead there’s not enough water overhead to make it rain.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You need clouds to start with. Cloud seeding just gives the moisture in clouds something to form drops around, so it just makes sense in the narrow band of conditions between rain clouds forming and it raining anyway.

Seeding the Australian air to make rain works as well as throwing seeds at your blow drier to make crops.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’d think if the conditions were right for cloud seeding to work, all of the particulates in the air from the fire would be seeding them already.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If anything this would be used to alleviate drought conditions and thereby prevent wildfires, not extinguish them, but the process is expensive and very controversial. While it was proven to work, it requires clouds over the targeted area. Plus, atmospheric conditions have to be just right, but even then the amount of precipitation is very low and is usually concentrated in small areas. This would likely have little to no effect on extinguishing the fires because it burns so hot that the precipitation would evaporate from the extreme heat rising up.