Weather engineering: False claims spread online
The most well-known form of weather modification is cloud seeding – a technique through which tiny particles are released into existing clouds to produce rain or snow.
Cloud seeding has been around for decades, and has been deployed in places like the US, China and the United Arab Emirates, mostly to help tackle water shortages.
On social media, some users have claimed that high levels of rainfall across the UK could only be explained by the deployment of cloud seeding on an industrial scale.
This is false.
On a rapidly warming planet, warm air is able to hold more moisture, which in turn fuels more intense rainfall.
Climate change may not be the only factor behind the UK’s waterlogged winter, but it has certainly played an important role in it.
While the UK government funded cloud seeding experiments in the 1950s, external, the Met Office says it is not aware of any activity connected to weather modification taking place in the UK in recent years.
In addition to that, cloud seeding can only have small, targeted impacts. It does not affect long-term weather or the climate.
That is where the idea of geoengineering comes in.
Geoengineering is an umbrella term most commonly used to describe attempts to manipulate the environment, with the goal of reducing the effects of climate change.
Under current climate policies, the Earth is likely to heat up by more than 1.5C in the next few decades, breaching a key climate threshold.
As the clock ticks away, some scientists believe governments should be looking into alternative methods of cooling the Earth.
This could involve capturing and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – something the UK is actively researching.
But there is no evidence to suggest that removing gases like carbon dioxide has any impact on short-term weather.
Cooling the Earth could also be achieved through solar radiation management – a process through which some of the Sun’s energy that reaches Earth is reflected back into space.
