Ministry of Energy has planned a new cloud seeding project in more than 10 provinces, said the head of the National Cloud Seeding Research Center of Iran.
Farid Golkar said with the use of planes, drones and ground-based generators, the project will be carried out in collaboration with the Aerospace Wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, ILNA reported.
“The IRGC Aerospace Wing provides the airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles, cloud seeding chemicals and other equipment,” he added.
The operations will be performed in Yazd, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kohgiluye and Boyer-Ahmad, Isfahan, Khuzestan, Kerman and Fars provinces.
“Drones will be flown for cloud seeding in South Khorasan, East Azarbaijan and West Azarbaijan Provinces,” Golkar noted. With proper funding the project will include ground-based generators in the western province of Kermanshah.
“The chemicals used in the cloud seeding can be imported but they are also made by domestic companies and we prefer to use the local products,” he added.
A form of weather modification, cloud seeding is a way of attempting to change the amount or type of precipitation by dispersing substances into the air, which serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei and alter the cloud's microphysical processes.
Cloud seeding chemicals may be dispersed by aircraft or drones or by dispersion devices on the ground (generators). For release by aircraft, silver iodide flares are ignited and dispersed as an aircraft or drone flies through a cloud.
When released by ground devices, the fine particles are carried upwards by air currents after release.
When water vapor or droplets attach to the silver iodide crystal, latent heat is also released, and it increases cloud size and the duration of storms.
Located on a largely semi-arid region, Iran has suffered from drought for years. According to official data, cloud seeding projects have been undertaken in the country since 2008 in several provinces namely Tehran, East and West Azarbaijan, Gilan and Mazandaran.
However, scholars say cloud seeding operations can enhance rainfall by 15%. Officials in the country are taking other measures to help alleviate the worsening water crisis including encouraging farmers to change their old, water-intensive and unsustainable farming practices.
Ninety percent of the water in Iran is consumed by the dysfunctional agriculture sector while economic experts have warned on a regular basis that the nation’s farming practices have become a major problem due to their high consumption and waste of water and must change.
