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Snowmakers, cloud seeding and ... um?
Aug. 6th, 2023 03:45 pmWarning: this is an untidy mess of me trying to think about things I don't know how to think about. Enjoy.
So. I came across a thing, which made me wonder about other things, and I don't have enough knowledge to ask Google intelligent questions, so I'm gonna put it out here:
https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/profile posted an article https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1820587.html featuring a youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk8pwE3IByg (soooo many ads) about how we now know what caused the increase of Atlantic ocean warming: lack of ship trails.
Did you know that there had been enough shipping trails to be photographable and measurable? Me neither. Apparently it was sufficiently blatant that the UN said "no more shipping trails" and this was done (by improving the quality of oil burned by the ships), AND THE ATLANTIC OCEAN WARMED RIGHT UP.
So the vlogbrothers (authors of the youtube video) suggested that maybe we might like to use big misters to put ocean water into the air as a way to seed clouds, and then the clouds will reflect the light that had been reflected by the previous shipping trails.
This made me wonder about the current wildfires. Can we use misters in the areas of wildfire danger to create clouds above them? Could such clouds precipitate where wanted?
On the one hand, I know that Apex Mountain used its snowmakers https://www.trailtimes.ca/news/apex-mountain-snowmaking-guns-ready-to-fight-pentiction-area-wildfire/ last year to repel the Keremeos Creek wildfire that threatened them, and it worked. I don't believe it made clouds (I don't know), and instead operated on creating a cooler/damper fuel base.
Water puts out fire by reducing its temperature so it can't continue burning, and/or by smothering it so oxygen cannot get to the fuel.
So, would misting create lower fuel temperature even if it didn't create clouds? I'm thinking of this because it might work in the BC interior - there are lots of lakes. But can it work on the prairies - so little water, and it is already taken for other needs. There's no extra to blow into the air. If water were to be blown into the air, after evaporation and whatnot, how long until it returns to the ground? How far would water blown into the air in, say, the Rockies' Foothills travel before falling on the prairie? How many snowmakers would be needed to generate clouds?
I mean. I know that a puny snowmaker is not going to have a globally measurable effect, but shipping trails do - and while ships are really big compared to many things, compared to the ocean they are miniscule - but still their smoke exhaust trails can be photographed from a satellite.
One little caveat: The photo of shipping trails shown in the video seems to be incorrect for the Atlantic Ocean. There *might* be that much shipping activity between Portugal and Greenland, but I doubt it.
Also: I have left out *oooodles* (**ooooooooodles**) of complexity of the ocean warming thing because I am obsessed with wondering whether we can't have our cake and eat it too by squelching wildfires while we also increase cloudiness and thus lower global temperature. I want it all.
So. I came across a thing, which made me wonder about other things, and I don't have enough knowledge to ask Google intelligent questions, so I'm gonna put it out here:
https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/profile posted an article https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1820587.html featuring a youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk8pwE3IByg (soooo many ads) about how we now know what caused the increase of Atlantic ocean warming: lack of ship trails.
Did you know that there had been enough shipping trails to be photographable and measurable? Me neither. Apparently it was sufficiently blatant that the UN said "no more shipping trails" and this was done (by improving the quality of oil burned by the ships), AND THE ATLANTIC OCEAN WARMED RIGHT UP.
So the vlogbrothers (authors of the youtube video) suggested that maybe we might like to use big misters to put ocean water into the air as a way to seed clouds, and then the clouds will reflect the light that had been reflected by the previous shipping trails.
This made me wonder about the current wildfires. Can we use misters in the areas of wildfire danger to create clouds above them? Could such clouds precipitate where wanted?
On the one hand, I know that Apex Mountain used its snowmakers https://www.trailtimes.ca/news/apex-mountain-snowmaking-guns-ready-to-fight-pentiction-area-wildfire/ last year to repel the Keremeos Creek wildfire that threatened them, and it worked. I don't believe it made clouds (I don't know), and instead operated on creating a cooler/damper fuel base.
Water puts out fire by reducing its temperature so it can't continue burning, and/or by smothering it so oxygen cannot get to the fuel.
So, would misting create lower fuel temperature even if it didn't create clouds? I'm thinking of this because it might work in the BC interior - there are lots of lakes. But can it work on the prairies - so little water, and it is already taken for other needs. There's no extra to blow into the air. If water were to be blown into the air, after evaporation and whatnot, how long until it returns to the ground? How far would water blown into the air in, say, the Rockies' Foothills travel before falling on the prairie? How many snowmakers would be needed to generate clouds?
I mean. I know that a puny snowmaker is not going to have a globally measurable effect, but shipping trails do - and while ships are really big compared to many things, compared to the ocean they are miniscule - but still their smoke exhaust trails can be photographed from a satellite.
One little caveat: The photo of shipping trails shown in the video seems to be incorrect for the Atlantic Ocean. There *might* be that much shipping activity between Portugal and Greenland, but I doubt it.
Also: I have left out *oooodles* (**ooooooooodles**) of complexity of the ocean warming thing because I am obsessed with wondering whether we can't have our cake and eat it too by squelching wildfires while we also increase cloudiness and thus lower global temperature. I want it all.
