The answer remains elusive to the scientists.
Is artificial rain the key to reversing global warming? Scientists are optimistic but completely unsure about the repercussions.
During the summer, hot air gets saturated with water vapor.
Warm air tends to be lighter in weight and moves upward in the atmosphere.
When it reaches the upper atmosphere, ambient cold air allows the vapor to form water droplets.
As the drops grow in volume, the air can no longer hold them and the clouds fall back on the Earth’s crust as rain.
But rain is not seasonal only. It can be triggered by human interventions as well.
The element that initiates the process of cloud forming may surprise many.
Lead (Pb), a metal that’s known to be toxic to a living organism.
Ice crystals can form in thin air when the atmosphere contains sufficient volumes of Lead.
Lead dust allows water droplets to coagulate within the cloud. This process expedites the larger droplet formation.
The method is called Cloud Seeding, a way that has been used to trigger rain to douse wildfires.
In recent years, climate scientists have hypothesized that cloud seeding can help make the climate change rate sluggish.
Water vapor absorbs sunlight reflected from the planet’s surface. And thus, keeps the Earth warmer.
If cloud seeding can eradicate excess clouds from the sky, a major fraction of the reflected sunlight would return to space.
That would cool down the atmosphere.
But the utility of geoengineering to harness nature remains elusive.
The feedback of geoengineering remains to be elucidated with plenty of research data.
Sumon Basak 