Abstract
THE problems confronting weather modification by seeding methods are well known and centre on the dispersion of the seeding agent over a large air volume. In a different method for artificial cloud modification proposed by Vonnegut and Moore1 electric charges are released by corona discharges into updraughts from the ground by a system of wires at a high electric potential. In this method the electric charges are much more rapidly dispersed, due to a rather large ion mobility in a thundercloud electric field, than is otherwise possible for seeding agents dispersed by turbulent convection. But the system of ground wires seems to be impractical for a weather modification technique with the demand for high mobility.
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References
Vonnegut, B., and Moore, C. B., in Recent Advances in Atmospheric Electricity (edit. by Smith, L. G.), 317–331. (Pergamon Press, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles, 1958).
Vonnegut, B., Proc. Conf. Atmos. Electricity, 169–181, (Air Force Cambridge Res. Lab., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955).
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WINTERBERG, F. Electric cloud and weather modification with intense relativistic electron beams. Nature 247, 271 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/247271a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/247271a0
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