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Discovery: Cloud Seeding

06/08/2008

Cloud Seeding

BBC World Service - Discovery, Cloud Seeding

Sue Broom investigates cloud seeding, a technique which can cause, or prevent, rain.

Cloud seeding is a long-practised technology which uses rockets, planes, cannons or ground generators to fire particles, usually silver iodide, into clouds to encourage water vapour to gather round them and eventually fall as rain.

It’s a technique that’s used in many places all over the world – from Australia, Iran and South Africa to China and some of the drier States in the United States.

It is usually used to make rain, but it can also be used to prevent rain; by making clouds rain out before they reach the region where rain is to be prevented.

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