Tinkering with the Clouds

...Climate patterns are sensitive to small changes in such variables as sunlight intensity and atmospheric gases, which can lead to major climatic shifts...

...Furthermore, she said, the techniques are unpredictable, and could "trigger irreversible changes in weather and climate which no nation could control...

...Despite advances generated by satellites and high speed computers, the study of weather and climate remains among the more inexact disciplines...

...In terms of long term survival," says Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, "I'd put inadvertent climate modification at the top" of the planet's environmental difficulties...

...Much the same can be said for the effectiveness of weather modification in suppressing storms...

...The seeding of Hurricane Debbie in 1969 resulted in an immediate 31 per cent decrease in wind speeds...

...The implications of Bryson's hypothesis are profound...

...Large nuclear and coal-fired power plants require several million gallons of water daily for cooling...

...If production of nitrous oxides continues to expand at projected levels, the ozone layer could be reduced 30 per cent by the year 2000, according to Michael McEIroy, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard...

...This should theoretically have warmed the planet's surface...

...The direction of future climatic change is not certain...

...The 1973 NAS study noted a "pressing need" to examine that question...

...Government officials refused to confirm or deny Hersh's allegations, leading a frustrated Pell to note that "in my own twelve years [in Congress] I don't recall a single area where comment is as flatly refused as this...

...military had indeed seeded clouds in Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam...

...The heat and pollution generated by major cities are apparently responsible for increased rain and storm activity downwind of them...

...The campaign was designed to intensify normal monsoons and thus impede infiltration by muddying roads, causing landslides, and washing out river crossings along the Ho Chi Minh trail...

...On July 3, 1972, The New York Times ran a front-page story by Seymour Hersh on the secret cloud seeding operations in Southeast Asia...

...The importance of this influence has not yet been fully determined, but it is extensive," Mordy says...

...Complaints would be lodged in the Security Council...

...Others are not so sure...

...Louis, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and Chicago...

...The extent to which precipitation can be increased over large areas has not been shown with sufficient statistical evidence, he notes...

...The interactions responsible for climatic change are so complex that it is difficult to distinguish changes caused by human intervention from natural ones.'Significant global changes, such as the great ice ages, have always occurred and are expected in the future...

...Other chemicals may also cause ozone destruction...

...Five basic interdependent factors are involved with climatic change, according to Wendell Mordy, meteorologist and visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions...

...That potential was highlighted by a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report, made public in May, which surveyed climatological research as it pertains to intelligence issues...

...A twenty-three-year study by two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) meteorologists recently found an 8 per cent decrease in autumn sunshine received by the continental United States...

...But he adds that many Government agencies are resistant to altering their policies and practices...

...The cloud modifiers will get 10,000 farmers to swear by them," says Schneider, "but it's an open question as to whether it works...

...One of the nation's largest weather modification firms is headed by Irving P. Krick, former chairman of the meteorology department at the California Institute of Technology...

...And like a researcher who stumbles on a discovery, man seems to alter weather—and climate— most effectively when he does so inadvertently...

...About the only safe thing to say is that the contribution of man's inadvertent effects—however significant it might be—is increasing," says John Kutz-bach, a University of Wisconsin climatologist who was a consultant on the report...

...4.4 million was budgeted for it in fiscal 1975...

...Various studies have shown rainfall increases ranging from 10 to 27 per cent up to forty miles downwind of St...

...Climate can also change quickly...

...The CIA study is scientifically inaccurate because it makes definitive predictions and overstates the results of climatological research...

...Land and water surface changes: Deforestation of the Brazilian, Indonesian, and African jungles might significantly alter regional rainfall and global air circulation patterns, according to a 1971 study of human impact on climate sponsored by MIT...

...Ice Age climates, for example, can perhaps start or end in less than a century...

...1 firmly believe there are going to be famines in the world as the environment deteriorates and the population increases," he says...

...Edith Brown Weiss, who teaches politics and civil engineering at Princeton, believes that military weather modification could hamper peaceful international efforts to predict and understand the atmosphere by such agencies as the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council of Scientific Unions...

...The Federal Government spread $209 million in meteorological research funds among nine different agencies in fiscal 1976...

...Parties to the convention would agree to refrain from the hostile use of environmental modification techniques having "widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects...

...The creation of large lakes may also alter the climate...

...potential for serious harm from intentional, inadvertent, and even natural changes in the atmosphere requires extreme caution and expanded study...

...As a result of a series of recent hearings on this and related issues, Bryson says, "we're making progress" in getting elected officials to understand the importance of climatic change...

...Climatic changes, the report predicted, mean that India will have a major drought every four years and will be able to support only three-fourths of its present population...

...The Senate later adopted the resolution by a vote of 82 to 10...

...At the Moscow summit conference earlier in 1974, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a joint statement supporting "the most effective measures possible" to overcome the dangers of environmental warfare...

...Krick estimates that his company's cloud seeding programs can increase average seasonal rainfall in an area by 30 to 50 per cent...

...Federally funded research examining inadvertent climate modification is already increasing somewhat...

...Cloud seeding is "off limits" for the Agency for International Development (AID), which administers the U.S...

...others are not...

...Though Northern Hemisphere temperatures increased on the average about one degree Fahrenheit from 1880 to 1940, they have declined one-half degree in the last three decades...

...However, we can still turn to the past for guidance into the future...

...Jonathan Swift's satire in Gulliver's Travels could until recently be easily applied to efforts for extracting water from clouds...

...Technology and food production in the United States might be drastically altered, according to Bryson, and the problems associated with irregular monsoons in many developing nations are already evident...

...Bryson believes the average surface temperature in recent decades has been abnormally warmer than during the past 1,000 years...

...China, Canada, the Soviet Union, and northern Europe, the report said, will also lose a large part of their present growing capability and millions will be endangered...

...Neither weather nor climate, which refers to these interactions in a region over a period of years, is thoroughly understood...

...Such increases, he says, can improve corn yields in Michigan by .5 per cent and Oklahoma wheat yields by 25 to 30 per cent...

...But since 1946, when winter clouds seeded with dry ice pellets produced snow for the first time, man's ability to modify the weather has slowly grown...

...nonmilitary foreign assistance program...

...The cooling, he says, means that the monsoons of Pakistan and India will probably not return regularly for the rest of this century to the intensity and duration typical of recent decades...

...These are: \Heat: It has been speculated that heat released into the atmosphere because of energy consumption could lead to regional climatic changes...

...Benefits of deliberate weather changes are sharply contested...

...Weather modification has been discussed increasingly in the wake of recent droughts in the United States, Sahelian Africa, and elsewhere...

...Located ten to forty miles above the earth's surface, the ozone layer is essential to life because it absorbs lethal ultraviolet radiation...

...After three sessions of bilateral talks, they agreed to a text which was jointly submitted to the Disarmament Conference in August 1975...

...Many scientists now believe that climate change might prove to be the most important effect of fluorocarbons...

...Though the amount of heat which can be safely added is unknown, climate could be an important limiting factor to energy use...

...The fellow believed that "in eight years more he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate...

...These were the major reasons the U.N...

...If there are going to be, there will also have to be foreign policy and military policy changes...

...But particulates may also effect precipitation by indirectly seeding clouds...

...Fluorocarbons in the atmosphere might be a sixth factor influencing the climate...

...Answers, when they exist, are tentative and often controversial...

...Fluorocarbons (inert gases used mostly as propellents in aerosol cans) gained attention more than a year ago because of research indicating their presence in the atmosphere is depleting the ozone layer...

...Several years ago, Rhodesia's neighbors were concerned that its cloud seeding program might reduce precipitation for them...

...Bryson suggests a possible return to the "little ice age" of the Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries when, for example, Greenland's once lush fields were buried in snow...

...For the planet, it is not a comfortable position...

...Later that month, Senator Claiborne Pell, Rhode Island Democrat, sponsored hearings on a resolution favoring a multilateral treaty banning "environmental warfare," which includes military weather and climate modification and such exotic possibilities as the creation of earthquakes for hostile purposes...

...If too little attention has been given to climatic change, the problem of weather modification is also troublesome...

...The proposed treaty has since been discussed at the Geneva Disarmament Conference, along with biological and chemical warfare proposals...

...Gaseous emissions: The level of carbon dioxide has risen about 10 per cent in the last century...

...In all of these areas, as Mordy notes, "we're tampering with the fundamental energy for life...

...The Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that because of the program, "rainfall was increased in limited areas up to 30 per cent above that predicted for the existing conditions...

...The heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers accompanying the Green Revolution may lead to a similar result...

...Weiss, who was then with the Brookings Institution, told a House subcommittee in September 1974 that the perception of the impact of weather modification is at least as important as its actual effectiveness...

...there are only probabilities...

...A top secret hearing made public in May 1974 revealed that the U.S...

...The questions raised by these abilities are troubling —even ominous...

...According to Bryson, the temperature shifts, part of a natural climatic fluctuation, are increasingly caused by dust put into the atmosphere by air pollution, agriculture, and overgrazing...

...The report cites a lack of adequate knowledge of natural climatic changes and the impact which human activity has on them...

...In addition, the phrase "widespread, long-lasting, or severe" is ambiguous, and will have to be defined after the fact...

...Climatic theory is not sufficiently developed to give a definitive prediction," says Reid Bryson, who heads the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin...

...With sixty nations having engaged in cloud seeding operations, international disputes of this sort "appear virtually inevitable," says Erik Eckholm of Lester Brown's Worldwatch Institute...

...In response to these problems, a 1975 report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommends increasing Federal climate-related research money from the present $18 million a year to $67 million by 1980...

...The environmental and social effects of weather modification are largely unknown...

...Hurricane Agnes in June 1972 resulted in 118 deaths and damage of $3.5 billion...

...A recent report by the United Nations Environmental Program called this "a cause for concern...

...The whole area is rife with legal, political, and environmental difficulties," says William Littlewood of AID's Technical Assistance Bureau...

...Weather—the localized day-to-day changes in the atmosphere—is the product of global interactions between the air, sea, and land which are driven by the sun's energy...

...The General Accounting Office pointed out in 1974 that because of fragmented research, poor coordination, and low funding, "an effective national weather modification research program has not been established...

...But it does indicate some concern within government about changes in climate...

...Particulates: Large quantities of dust from natural and human sources tend to alter solar radiation fluxes...

...But if the cooling trend continues, he adds, Green Revolution crop strains, specialized to thrive during a time of optimum temperature and rainfall, would be seriously endangered...

...Water vapor: Though apparently not yet a global problem, increases in water vapor produce local effects...

...The political challenge is in responding to efforts whose full significance cannot yet be accurately gauged...

...Since a nation could secretly wage some kind of weather war against an enemy for years, poor weather downwind from a country could easily be viewed as "unnatural," regardless of the cause...

...Krick, who believes that concerns about side effects of these programs are "mostly nonsense," argues that "drought can be virtually eliminated if you get at it early enough...

...Paul Crutzen, a research scientist at NCAR, says "we cannot rule out the possibility" that chlorine used in both drinking water and sewage treatment may damage the ozone layer...

...Hurricanes, tornadoes, hailstorms, and lightning in the United States cause an average of more than 300 deaths and $2 billion property damage annually...

...One problem with the CIA report, however, is that no certain predictions can be made...

...The use of weather modification techniques for military purposes is of special concern...

...Efforts mount to manipulate the weather for peaceful purposes and as a weapon of war Tinkering with the Clouds JOHN DERNBACH During his third voyage, Gulliver met a sooty and ragged man who "had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers," which were to be stored and "let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers...

...The evaporation of this water from cooling ponds or towers has significantly increased fog, storms, and precipitation downwind of many Pennsylvania power plants, according to Mordy...

...The result, many scientists warned, could be a sharp increase in skin cancer cases...

...The John Dernbach, a student at the University of Michigan Law School has written on environmental issues for The Progressive and other publications...

...General Assembly, on November 22, 1974, adopted without dissent a Soviet resolution calling for a treaty prohibiting environmental warfare...

...NOAA's Project Stormfury, designed to reduce winds from hurricanes, is slightly more encouraging...

...Historically, overgrazing, one-crop agriculture, and deforestation may have contributed to dryer climates in the Middle East, northern Africa, and western India...

...They do not reach the severity of the conclusions in the CIA study, which Bryson says "didn't read the source documents carefully enough...

...Continued increases in carbon dioxide, Schneider warns, could melt snow fields or Arctic sea ice, or change sea levels sometime during the next century...

...Furthermore, it may be difficult to distinguish short-term fluctuations from the first stages of large climatic shifts...

...There are weather modification projects in twenty-five states, mostly west of the Mississippi, about half of which are meant to increase rainfall or winter snowpack in the Rocky Mountains for agricultural and municipal water supplies...

...Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz has said cloud seeding might become a significant means to increase water supplies for farmers...

...Increased carbon dioxide in the air from the use of fossil fuels works to "exacerbate the suppression of the monsoon...

...Cloud seeding over the Ho Chi Minh trail would violate the convention, for example, only if it worked—that is, if the Security Council was persuaded that its effects were significant...

...Despite strong interest in reducing such costs, experiments to reduce lightning and suppress hail are generally inconclusive, according to the NAS report...

...There is concern, for example, that cloud seeding might affect precipitation downwind...

...By allowing hostile modification activity on a small scale, Weiss told a Senate subcommitee in January, the treaty does not lessen the possibility that peaceful international efforts in atmospheric research and weather forecasting will be undermined...

...The presence of fluorocarbons in the stratosphere could have a ' 'greenhouse effect'' similar to that of carbon dioxide, and increase global temperatures by as much as 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to Veerabhadran Ramanthan of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Lang-ley Research Center...

...Their purpose is to increase and coordinate research on climatic change...

...The operation, which lasted from 1967 and 1972, cost $21.6 million...

...Two bills now before Congress would implement the kind of scheme set forth in the NAS report...

...Most people are not concerned with that," says meteorologist Wendell Mordy, who was once an advocate of large-scale weather modification, but now has "very strong misgivings" about it...

...Of $19.5 million spent directly on weather modification, only about $1.4 million was spent examining its legal, social, economic, and ecological effects...

...Some of the changes are cyclical...

...This text is not as comprehensive as that accompanying the General Assembly resolution...

...One of the scientists, James K. Angell, said the charrge might be caused by an increase in air pollution, particularly in the northeast...