Weather control could be used by the European Union as a technological means towards avoiding natural disasters and improving the quality of life for its citizens.
In the last years we have observed frequent wildfires and drought in southern Europe, floods in continental Europe and reduced crop yield. These events had a negative impact on humans, especially economic in nature, and most importantly affected human lives and
ecosystems directly.
This year we have seen flooding in Western Europe (12-15 July 2021) and Romania, a
tornado in the middle of Europe and extreme wildfires in Crete.
This is both a consequence of climate change and lack of weather control technology.
The European Union is indeed a global leader in reducing carbon emissions by using modern technology.
However it is not currently employing weather control techniques, which is disappointing, as it reflects a lack of will at the level of the current leaders towards using the forces of nature for improving human life.
Surprisingly, about 30 years ago in Romania, people were able to use the smallest military
aircraft with external silver iodide reservoirs for cloud seeding, in order to increase rainfall over southern Romania.
This had economic benefits, as it reduced the probability of floods and hail while increasing the crop yield rate (a small fraction of the GDP, but relevant for
feeding the country).
Moreover large areas were irrigated in the past, which increased albedo, water retention in the soil and so on. New trees were planted in forests in order to prevent the floods.
Nowadays even though the overall technological level has increased, people don’t want to use it for weather control.
In Crete apparently the fire was caused by human intentions.
In other regions, small thermodynamic fluctuations were enough to cause a spark that transformed forests into ashes. Human lives were lost, but people seem to adapt and usually go over such events.
The amplitude of these events increases in time.
When I was about 10 years old, a small tornado-like air pattern was something unusual that most people would care about. Now there are yearly tornados (close to the Black Sea shore) and their higher frequency causes people to become uninterested in these events.
Weather controlling means that a civilization is able to understand and predict atmospheric changes and has the control technology that affects the climate at regional level.
Sensing technology already exists and is used for weather prediction (mostly weather satellites and stations), but models are often too simplistic and the sensor data fusion at high level is forgotten.
The weather control technology should include cloud seeding, controlling thermal currents via mirrors (such as in solar mirror plants) and variable albedo structures, drones for generating free paths in forests (separating patches of forests with the purpose of not
allowing fires to extend) for the beginning.
European level effort toward this purpose is essential to make the most out of such technologies.
Moreover, this would be one step further making people's lives more secure, and bringing humanity closer to the purpose of becoming a type I technological species (planetary civilization on the Kardashev scale).
Codrin Paul Oneci is a Romanian student studying aerospace engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
