A rationale for weather‐control research

Abstract

The subject fields of weather control and weather modification are inseparable from the field of meteorology as a whole. The first steps in weather modification must be accompanied by a broadening of man's knowledge of the processes, large and small, that take place in the atmosphere and at its boundaries. Study will be most rewarding, we believe, if it consists of investigation into the various‐sized processes related to natural atmospheric instabilities, colloidal, convective, and baroclinic, and to the linkages between them. Enquiry into these and other interesting or pertinent meteorological phenomena seems most likely to reward effort if the techniques and tools at the disposal of the meteorological community are used not singly, but in concert, and if the efforts made are not single‐minded, but coordinated. To this end a set of promising specific areas for research are listed not with the idea that this set is a definitive one, but rather as a rational beginning within the thesis developed in this study.

weather-modification progress and the need for interactive research

“…The broad subject of weather and climate modification has twice been thoroughly scrutinized in this decade. In 1962, at the request of the National Science Foundation, The RAND Corporation surveyed the status of relevant research with the objective of establishing a rationale for a cohesive and organized approach to weather modification (Greenfield et al, 1962). The two basic themes of that study were 1) the rudimentary and fragmentary state of knowledge about energy fluctuations among various scales of atmospheric motion and about the interactions among scaled phenomena, and 2) the existence of unstable atmospheric situations with which man could effectively interfere, not only at microphysical scales but also at the larger scales of cyclonic and global circulations.…”