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Ask a Climatologist

N

Nabobalis

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I thought some forms of weather "control" were possible - in that if you seed a cloud with a material that allows rain to condense out of it you can get the cloud to rain out.

It's "control" in the sense that it's dependent on there being enough vapour in the air in the first place and only results in one effect, but I was under the impression that this does in fact work. Was I wrong?

I thought that worked as well, but personally when people say control the weather I take it to mean real control - like turning rain or cloud cover on or off.
 
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RickG

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What do you make of this?

Link

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas


One of the primary concerns is the loss of permafrost which is happening. In that case both methane and carbon dioxide releases will occurs. But yes, the Russian side of the Arctic has been seen releasing greater than normal quantities of methane and carbon dioxide too.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1246.full.pdf
http://www.lter.uaf.edu/pdf/1275_Wickland_Striegl_2006.pdf
A projection of severe near-surface permafrost degradation during the 21st century

...and a good discussion about it here geared more for the layman: Not so Permanent Permafrost
 
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RickG

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I thought some forms of weather "control" were possible - in that if you seed a cloud with a material that allows rain to condense out of it you can get the cloud to rain out.

It's "control" in the sense that it's dependent on there being enough vapour in the air in the first place and only results in one effect, but I was under the impression that this does in fact work. Was I wrong?

Well, this is quite a bit off topic and once again I will say, I'm not a meteorologist. But understand that weather is extremely chaotic and the reason weather forecasts are good for only a few days to maybe a week. In the case of cloud seeding it can only be done on an extremely local level and only under conditions where clouds already contain the necessary moisture.

Let me put it this way, have you ever heard of any drought stricken areas requesting cloud seeding? Texas would have loved it this past summer. Bottom line, its not that practical nor effective, nor is it really what I would call altering weather.

Enough about that. Let's get back to climate.
 
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Cabal

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Well, this is quite a bit off topic and once again I will say, I'm not a meteorologist. But understand that weather is extremely chaotic and the reason weather forecasts are good for only a few days to maybe a week. In the case of cloud seeding it can only be done on an extremely local level and only under conditions where clouds already contain the necessary moisture.

Let me put it this way, have you ever heard of any drought stricken areas requesting cloud seeding? Texas would have loved it this past summer. Bottom line, its not that practical nor effective, nor is it really what I would call altering weather.

Enough about that. Let's get back to climate.

Sorry, forgot.

I know China was talking about doing it for the Olympics, but that could be the usual nationalistic bluster that these things provoke. It did sound plausible, at least.
 
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J

Jazer

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Am I really reading this?
First of all you have to look at what causes our weather. You have a 50 degree difference in the temps between the Equator and the North Pole. This creates currents in the ocean and what they call the trade winds. So to change the weather could be little more then the butterfly effect. A little bit one place could be a lot somewhere else. So if you mix in a bit of the chaos theory and the ever popular domino theory, then you just do not know where you will end up at.

For Haarp to beam more than 1.7 gigawatts (billion watts) of radiated power into the ionosphere could be considered more then just a butterfly flapping it's wings. Somewhere I would expect something to have been changed.

20080924034939-haarp2.jpg
haarp-closeup.jpg
 
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CabVet

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First of all you have to look at what causes our weather. You have a 50 degree difference in the temps between the Equator and the North Pole. This creates currents in the ocean and what they call the trade winds. So to change the weather could be little more then the butterfly effect. A little bit one place could be a lot somewhere else. So if you mix in a bit of the chaos theory and the ever popular domino theory, then you just do not know where you will end up at.

Influencing or having an effect in the weather is one thing, controlling it is another. If you do know how to do that, please publish it as there are a lot of starving people that could use some rain to water their crops.
 
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Cabal

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First of all you have to look at what causes our weather. You have a 50 degree difference in the temps between the Equator and the North Pole. This creates currents in the ocean and what they call the trade winds. So to change the weather could be little more then the butterfly effect. A little bit one place could be a lot somewhere else. So if you mix in a bit of the chaos theory and the ever popular domino theory, then you just do not know where you will end up at.

That's hardly convincing. If we knew exactly how to describe that chaotic system, both weather and climate predictions would be completely accurate. So you could CHANGE the otherwise impending weather by making a small change to the global weather system maybe, but without having an accurate model of global weather it wouldn't really be true control as the outcome would not be determinable for a given change.
 
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RickG

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First of all you have to look at what causes our weather. You have a 50 degree difference in the temps between the Equator and the North Pole. This creates currents in the ocean and what they call the trade winds. So to change the weather could be little more then the butterfly effect. A little bit one place could be a lot somewhere else. So if you mix in a bit of the chaos theory and the ever popular domino theory, then you just do not know where you will end up at.

Rubbish. If you want to start a control the weather conspiracy thread do so, this thread is not the place for it. And I suggest putting it in the political forum, not the science.
 
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CabVet

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We were using the word change.
Control would be a different conversation.

No, no, not a chance, you started it.

There are a lot of different ways man can control the weather. But if you have never done a study on it then I suppose you do not know much about that.
 
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N

Nabobalis

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For Haarp to beam more than 1.7 gigawatts (billion watts) of radiated power into the ionosphere could be considered more then just a butterfly flapping it's wings. Somewhere I would expect something to have been changed.

Most of that energy is not absorbed by the ionosphere, in the Arctic there is a similar set up and from my understanding most of the energy blasted up is lost to space.
 
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J

Jazer

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I thought that worked as well, but personally when people say control the weather I take it to mean real control - like turning rain or cloud cover on or off.
Do you mean like walking on the water? To control the weather would be to difficult to prove. If you have a picnic planed and it's raining, so you pray for the rain to stop. How can you know for sure it was your prayer answered?

35And the same day, when the even was come, he said to them, Let us pass over to the other side. 36And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. 37And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. 38And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say to him, Master, care you not that we perish? 39And He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40And he said to them, Why are you so fearful? how is it that you have no faith? 41And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
 
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RickG

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First of all you have to look at what causes our weather. You have a 50 degree difference in the temps between the Equator and the North Pole. This creates currents in the ocean and what they call the trade winds. So to change the weather could be little more then the butterfly effect. A little bit one place could be a lot somewhere else. So if you mix in a bit of the chaos theory and the ever popular domino theory, then you just do not know where you will end up at.

For Haarp to beam more than 1.7 gigawatts (billion watts) of radiated power into the ionosphere could be considered more then just a butterfly flapping it's wings. Somewhere I would expect something to have been changed.

Two things Jazer: (1) Harrp is not about controlling the weather and (2) there is no weather in the ionosphere.

If you have a serious question about climate please ask it.
 
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RickG

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Do you mean like walking on the water? To control the weather would be to difficult to prove. If you have a picnic planed and it's raining, so you pray for the rain to stop. How can you know for sure it was your prayer answered?

35And the same day, when the even was come, he said to them, Let us pass over to the other side. 36And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. 37And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. 38And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say to him, Master, care you not that we perish? 39And He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40And he said to them, Why are you so fearful? how is it that you have no faith? 41And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

This is my last plea for you to get back on topic. Might I remind you that one Mod Hat has already been placed on this thread for off topic comments. Your cooperation is appreciated. Thanks.
 
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N

Nabobalis

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Do you mean like walking on the water? To control the weather would be to difficult to prove. If you have a picnic planed and it's raining, so you pray for the rain to stop. How can you know for sure it was your prayer answered?

35And the same day, when the even was come, he said to them, Let us pass over to the other side. 36And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. 37And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. 38And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say to him, Master, care you not that we perish? 39And He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40And he said to them, Why are you so fearful? how is it that you have no faith? 41And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

That is nice and all, but you were talking about weather control through HARRP, so the method would be natural and explainable via the scientific method.

Back on to the climate: There was a column in Physics World calling for a CERN of climate physics, would you think such an idea would be helpful to the field?
 
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Orogeny

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In my example the toys are the carbon dioxide, the child is industry and other CO2 sources, and the mother is the government. Instead of insisting that the polluters clean up their mess (which they are clearly incapable of doing) the government should just go ahead and do it. Not rocket science this is. (Yoda)
Billy Madison Dumb Answer FULL SCENE [HD] - YouTube

Sorry, couldn't resist. :(

Climate question: I know this is more of a philosophical question than a technical one, but is it your sense that we as a species are on the right path toward mitigating our effect on the climate, or do we need to take more drastic measures?
 
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RickG

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Back on to the climate: There was a column in Physics World calling for a CERN of climate physics, would you think such an idea would be helpful to the field?

You mean like NASA/GISS, NCDC, NOAA, HadCRU, GHCN, GRIP, NCAR, and NGDC to mention a few?

Actually the IPCC probably comes close to that. The "Work Groups" of the IPCC are entirely composed of the top actively practicing climate scientists from around the world. The gene pool just doesn't get any better than that.
 
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acropolis

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Quite a bit. Joseph Fourier was first to discover the greenhouse effect in 1824 (Annales de chimie et de physique). It was carried on further by John Tyndall in 1858 who discovered that CO2 absorbed IR radiation and thus affected temperature on Earth. In 1898 Svante Arrhenius quantified CO2 as a GHG and predicted that it could cause global temperatures to increase by 4 to 5 deg. C per doubling of atmospheric CO2. The modern consensus among climatologists is now 3.5 deg. C per doubling. So, in a nutshell, the physics of CO2 has been well known for well over a century and recognized as a greenhouse gas that can affect global temperatures dramatically.

As you might guess, yes CO2 is the dominating factor in global average temperature. It is well documented in the paleo record and verified with both earth based instrumentation and satellite data. For the previous 600,000 years, CO2 has not exceed 280 ppm nor do proxy records show temperatures exceeding to days current levels. In 1850 atmospheric CO2 was 280 ppm, today it is 390 ppm, right on schedule to a 3.5 deg C doubling (560 ppm) by the end of the century or early next century.

That is not to say that CO2 has been the only factor causing warming, it indeed has not. From 1850 to 1940 increase in total solar irradiation (TSI) can account for about 30% of the warming. From 1970 to present, almost all of the warming is contributed to GHGs, most of which is CO2.

Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png


co2_temp_1900_2008.gif


Green line is carbon dioxide levels from ice cores obtained at Law Dome, East Antarctica (CDIAC). Blue line is carbon dioxide levels measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii (NOAA). Red line is annual global temperature anomaly (GISS).

Excellent, thanks!
 
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