Weather Control?

[Highorbit_drifter]

I was wondering what people would consider reasonable weather control, especially at the lower tech levels.

I had just reread Clarke's Fountain's of Paradise which describes what weather control in near future terms. It does have the Sahara as farmland, and I think canon describes that as much higher TL terraforming. What I'm interested in is the other effect in the book, controling wind patterns and small scale storms.

In the book orbital fortresses armed with lasers had been converted to peaceful use. Computers controlled beams directed at selected sections of the atmosphere or heat absorbant targets on the ground, acting like 'the pebble that starts an avalance'.

What would that look like, in action? Assuming an earthlike planet, can rainstorms be scheduled? Can rain be redirected to farmland or deserts as needed? Can violent storms (hurricanes, tornadoes) be redirected? Over what scale? Hundreds or thousands of miles? Remember this is at TL8.

I found this information in an older post:
From MT Ref's Companion, p. 28
Early Weather Control: TL 8
Major Terraforming, advanced weather control: TL 12

Any input would be helpful, thanks

 

[Spinward Scout]

Can violent storms (hurricanes) be redirected? Over what scale? Hundreds or thousands of miles? Remember this is at TL8.

Real-life hurricane busters theory.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-03/hurricane-busters

Also, hurricanes can be increased or decreased by heating or cooling the surface of the ocean in the path of the hurricane. The hotter the surface is, the faster and larger the hurricane gets - and it can turn towards hotter water. But you're talking over 100's of miles so not as feasible at TL-8.

Someone suggested once to tow an iceburg into the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico into the path of a hurricane, but they weren't sure it would make it that far south.

Tornadoes happen when a hot and cold front meet - if you can either cool off the hot front or heat up the cold front, the storm shouldn't produce a tornado.

 

[aramis]

In theory, a maser directed at the ocean should heat up the local area enough to cause clouding and increase the likelihood of storms.

Orbital storm creation masers are just barely within current tech capabilities.

Massive solar reflectors can be used for the same purpose, and while lower tech, are also much more obvious, and don't have an easy "off switch"...

 

[BytePro]

TL-8 sci-fi methods?

Try some real world stuff (note: none of this stuff has been conclusive, nor done on a large scale, to my knowledge)

Causing rain: traditional cloud seeding (salts/gas); femtosecond pulsed infrared
Stopping rain: rockets (cloud dispersal -Beijing Olympics!)
Global Warming: burn lots of fossil fuels! :devil:

Some other brute force methods come to mind (briefly!)
Moving clouds, weather fronts, etc.:
- massive Dyson fan-style air-movers
Controlling ocean (subsurface) temps:
- via controlled magma and thermal releases from fault lines and vents
- via huge current diverters
- via huge herds of trained whales! o:
From space:
- massive solar concentrators made up of trillions (and trillions) of instantly directable micro-mirror devices (ala TI DLP)

Large, massive GW, high frequency, microwave beamers could also be used - assuming Fusion (TL?) is available.

 

[far-trader]

(...inspired? by the whales and fan ideas above)

OK everybody, there's a massive destructive weather system coming right for us, I need every man, woman, and child waving their hands in unison to create a high pressure bubble to divert it around us to save the town.

...to those who "got it" I apologize, to the rest, well, whatever

 

[BytePro]

:rofl::rofl:

[Ohhh... that was so bad, its good! ]

 

[SanDragon]

*smiles and slides far-trader a beer*

 

[Carlobrand]

Oddly enough, I think climate control might be easier than weather control. Weather control implies a pretty finessed understanding of weather. Climate control just requires a huge budget and a lot of energy - we could do that now with enough nukes, winter in July. Or dump CO2 on a massive scale to warm a planet, or alter ocean currents by zapping the polar ice cap, or increase annual precipitation in a downwind region by a constant low-intensity shine of huge numbers of lasers - or masers? - on a particular region of oceans.

Strikes me that it would be easier to increase average annual precipitation than to make it rain in a particular place at a particular time.

 

[Highorbit_drifter]

Thank you for the input. I'm leaning more towards masers than the whales route, but thats just personal preference.

So I'm thinking something like a rainstorm can be roughly scheduled, maybe delayed or advanced by a day or so. By the next TL storms can be scheduled to the hour and general severity.
Storms likely to produce tornadoes can be scheduled, the tornadoes themselves produced, or encouraged, at predetermined times and areas. One of the main reasons for weather control would be to lessen the damage from, or at least get people out of the way of, severe weather. At higher TL tornadoes can be tightly controlled, ala The Phantom of Kansas.
Hurricanes are right out, at least at first, although their severity might be downgraded or their general path might be slightly diverted. Probably at a low probability of sucess at TL8, much better at 9, and pretty well by A.

Climate control, terraforming, I agree can be accomplished at low TL, if you are just going for broad changes, rather than the targeted strike. I'm just looking at storm control, severe weather prediction/control and the like. I'm sure at higher TLs climate control you get worldscaping and such.

 

[McPerth]

TL-8 sci-fi methods?

Try some real world stuff (note: none of this stuff has been conclusive, nor done on a large scale, to my knowledge)

Causing rain: traditional cloud seeding (salts/gas); femtosecond pulsed infrared
Stopping rain: rockets (cloud dispersal -Beijing Olympics!)
Global Warming: burn lots of fossil fuels! :devil:

Some other brute force methods come to mind (briefly!)
Moving clouds, weather fronts, etc.:
- massive Dyson fan-style air-movers
Controlling ocean (subsurface) temps:
- via controlled magma and thermal releases from fault lines and vents
- via huge current diverters
- via huge herds of trained whales! o:
From space:
- massive solar concentrators made up of trillions (and trillions) of instantly directable micro-mirror devices (ala TI DLP)

Large, massive GW, high frequency, microwave beamers could also be used - assuming Fusion (TL?) is available.

You forgot:
- global cooling: cause a nuclear winter (though side effects may be unpleasant) :devil:

 

[Icosahedron]

You forgot:
- global cooling: cause a nuclear winter (though side effects may be unpleasant) :devil:

You're not supposed to come up with that solution yourself - you're supposed to wait until they tell you it's the only solution to the crisis they created.
And tell you where it needs to be centred for the best effect...