We are increasingly witnessing dangerous weather phenomena, natural disasters. Scientists attribute this to global warming, the "nervousness" of the climate, and conspiracy theorists argue that climate weapons are to blame. Let's figure out where the border between truth and speculation lies.
in the modern world, a person has to navigate the ocean of various information. Unfortunately, the Internet and television not only provide us with useful information, but also satisfy people's interest in sensation, in the mysterious and supernatural. This category also includes speculations on climate weapons. Interest in it is fueled by the tense political situation in the world and often recurring natural disasters.
Conversations about climatic or, more broadly, geophysical weapons are not groundless, and the question itself deserves close attention. The fact is that by the middle of the 20th century, scientists made great progress in the study of atmospheric and other natural processes and discovered a source of energy of unprecedented power - nuclear reactions. People have the opportunity to influence the environment, and not only with good intentions. And if climatic weapons were created, then they could bring a lot of troubles to all of humanity.
Humanity has always strived to be less dependent on climate and weather, to master the elements and direct their forces to their advantage. Ignorant pagans resorted to various rituals and the help of sorcerers, trying to bring the long-awaited rain. They believed in spirits and supernatural powers. These rituals have survived to this day, and are found not only among African tribes. It is probably difficult for someone to imagine this, but in the 21st century they still hold prayers, or plow the river with a plow, or blow a pipe from an onion arrow - all with the same purpose to make it rain.
But belief is one thing and science is another. Observant people noticed that it often rains after strong forest fires. Precipitation also accompanied artillery battles. Later it was experimentally proved that the water vapor contained in the air turns into cloudy droplets due to the presence of condensation centers or nuclei.
Condensation nuclei enter the atmosphere from various sources. Crystals of sea salt appear in the air with splashes of sea water. Nitric acid droplets are formed during thunderstorms and forest fires. Fires and chimneys deliver smoke particles and sulfuric acid salts - sulfates into the air. The wind picks up grains of soil from the ground. It is on these particles that water droplets or ice crystals grow in the clouds.
Precipitation most often falls from mixed clouds, consisting of both water droplets and ice particles. At the same time, condensation and freezing of drops (crystallization) and the transformation of water vapor into crystals (sublimation) occur simultaneously in the cloud. Depending on the ratio of these processes, various precipitation can occur. For example, with the intensive growth of solid ice particles, hail forms in a cumulonimbus cloud.
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It was the disclosure of the mechanism of formation of clouds and precipitation that formed the basis of methods of influencing the weather. Having passed the way from experimentation to implementation in practice, they have proven their worth and are successfully used in different countries and various spheres of life.
From the 18th and 19th centuries, evidence of numerous attempts to make rain reached us. Outright deceivers and swindlers, eccentrics and enthusiastic researchers worked in this field. Someone raised gunpowder charges on balloons, someone invented chemical mixtures that are burned in large vats, someone heated the air with large fires. One of the most famous "rain sellers" was the American Charles Hatfield. He achieved such authority that he entered into an agreement to fill a reservoir in the city of San Diego with rainwater, after which there was a flood. He is also credited with saving Italy from drought in 1922.
In the middle of the 20th century, the impact on the weather received a scientific basis, experiments were carried out and technologies were developed for causing precipitation, dispersing fog, and combating hail. Large-scale studies were carried out in the USSR, the USA and other countries. The essence of precipitation management is very simple: to prevent precipitation over a certain area, you need to provoke precipitation over another. Artificial condensation nuclei (usually silver iodide or lead iodide) and refrigerants (solid carbon dioxide) are used as active substances. For seeding clouds with reagents, planes or shells are used. In the cloud, the processes of formation and enlargement of drops are accelerated, as a result of which precipitation begins. The same technology is used to artificially increase precipitation.
An effective and well-organized hail control system was established in the Soviet Union. Today Roshydromet continues to work in this area.
In the southern regions of the country, where hail causes great damage to agriculture every year, there are paramilitary units of the hydrometeorological service equipped with special rocket launchers to deliver reagents to a thundercloud. Only one projectile launched into the sky introduces into the cloud trillions of reagent particles, which become additional nuclei of crystallization. Competing with natural embryos of hailstones, they take some of the water from the cloud. As a result, ice particles do not reach large sizes and fall to the ground. On the way, they often have time to melt, turning into rain.
Today, many countries are successfully regulating precipitation: Russia, the USA, France, Australia, Syria, Iran, and others. Roshydromet is armed with a special laboratory aircraft based on the Yak-42 for these purposes, similar vessels are used abroad.
An important feature of the described technologies should be noted: precipitation can be caused or prevented only over a limited area, that is, locally. In addition, the water balance is not disturbed, and the clouds over the city can be dispersed only by pouring rain over its surroundings. From the history of recent years, the following fact is known: some Arab countries used technologies to artificially increase precipitation, and in neighboring states there was a shortage of rain.
The military could not help but pay attention to these rather effective technologies, and history knows cases of the use of meteorological weapons. This is Operation Popeye, conducted by the United States during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1972. American planes sprayed the clouds with silver iodide during the rainy season, and rainfall tripled from normal. As a result, rice fields and roads were eroded, as well as the Ho Chi Minh guerrilla trail.
However, the weather in large areas depends on processes of a large, synoptic scale, that is, on the movement of atmospheric eddies - cyclones and anticyclones, air masses with different properties and atmospheric fronts separating them. Intervention in them requires colossal expenditures of energy and funds. For example, the energy of one cyclone is comparable to the power of several atomic bombs. Currently, no other state has the resources and technologies for such large-scale impacts on the atmosphere.
Although the mastery of atomic energy at one time inspired great hopes in the military and politicians-militarists. In addition to direct nuclear strikes against the enemy, atomic weapons could serve as a tool for influencing natural processes in order to cause natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods. Experimental nuclear explosions in various environments were carried out both in the United States and in the Soviet Union. However, the test results were not encouraging.
At the same time, the buildup of nuclear weapons made scientists sound the alarm. According to their calculations, the result of a large-scale nuclear conflict should have been the onset of a nuclear winter. The ashes from numerous fires would cause a drastic reduction in the flow of solar energy to the earth's surface. This would cool the atmosphere for many years. Here is a real climate weapon against the entire planet!
Nuclear winter modeling has been the subject of many studies and continues to this day. Scientists are using increasingly complex models of the Earth's climate system and increasingly powerful computers. Experts are not at all unambiguous in their assessments of the geophysical consequences of a nuclear war, but one thing is certain: it will turn into a serious catastrophe for mankind and cause irreparable harm to the natural environment.
It must be said that humanity has realized what opportunities and what consequences the creation of climate weapons will have. In 1977, at the initiative of the USSR, the international convention No. 2692 "On the prohibition of military or any other hostile use of means of influencing the natural environment" was adopted. Of course, the existence of this agreement does not guarantee that this or that country will abandon research, testing and even the use of climate weapons. After all, it will be quite difficult to detect the use of such technologies: this requires a developed monitoring system that provides the most detailed information about the state of the environment.
And, of course, nothing can stop conspiracy theorists from discussing climate weapons. The Internet is teeming with materials on the secret technologies of meteorological warfare. Moreover, the interest in the issue is supported by nature itself, presenting to mankind cataclysm after cataclysm: the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, hurricanes Irma, Katrina, the heat wave of 2010 in European Russia, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis … It is so convenient to explain all this with the use of secret weapons, which was would be quite natural in the era of global confrontation of forces.
A variety of climatic weapons were "invented": creating an artificial ozone hole, changing the tilt of the earth's axis, etc. As one of the most impressive horror stories, the American project HAARP (program of high-frequency active research of the aurora zone) is presented. Within its framework, in Alaska, in the period from 1997 to 2007, the world's most powerful radio transmitter complex was built, designed to influence the Earth's ionosphere. It conducted research both military and peaceful. You can read in detail about the work on the project and the results obtained in various sources, for example, here.
What rumors do not go around the complex in Alaska. He is credited with the ability to disable communications and electronics, cause natural and man-made disasters, and even affect the psyche of people at a distance. All this is allegedly carried out through the creation of plasma formations (plasmoids) in the ionosphere, which serve for directional reflection of energy and radiation flows. A similar project, by the way, exists in Russia. This is the "Sura" complex in the Nizhny Novgorod region
In response, experts argue that the effect of the complex of radio transmitters on the ionosphere is incomparable with the amount of energy that it receives from the Sun. Modern science has no evidence that such small disturbances in the ionosphere are capable of perceptibly changing the state of the lower atmosphere - the troposphere, namely, it is the "weather kitchen".
Scientists have not yet figured out the entire complex set of interrelated processes occurring in the earth's shells in order to achieve the desired effects by means of small, point effects. A number of studies suggest the existence of such mechanisms that play the role of a trigger (they are also called trigger mechanisms). But science has made little progress in this direction.
And finally, one more remark should be made. It is obvious that the country that would have mastered the technologies of large-scale impact on the weather and climate, in the first place, would not allow natural disasters to occur on its territory. And we are not seeing this today.
However, research is ongoing and humankind will certainly make great strides in weather management someday. How these technologies will be applied is another question.
Alexander Surkov
