Glaciogenic seeding of cold-season orographic clouds to enhance precipitation: status and prospects
Glaciogenic seeding of cold-season orographic clouds to enhance precipitation: status and prospects
复制标题
DOI：
10.1175/bams-d-21-0279.1
复制
发表时间：
2022-07
影响因子：
8
通讯作者：
B. Geerts;R. Rauber
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
B. Geerts;R. Rauber
这篇文章的目的是为利益相关者和新闻媒体提供地形云播种研究，新功能和前景的简单语言摘要。具体地说，我们解决了一个广泛实践的人工影响天气的问题，即在整个寒冷季节对地形云进行冰川播种，是否可以在流域尺度上产生经济上有用的降水增加。我们的目标是澄清目前对人工降雨如何影响降水的科学理解，这比同行评议的文献更容易理解。尽管几十年的科学报告表明降水的变化是不确定的，但在有人工降雨的地区，公众对人工降雨“有效”的信心通常很高。随机播种实验具有坚实的统计基础，注重结果，但由于播种信号小，降水自然有噪声，通常需要太多的病例，难以负担，因此不鼓励进行随机播种实验。另一种补充方法是物理评估，当注入播种材料时，它会检查云和降水过程的变化，从而得出最合适的环境条件。最近的物理评估已经为冷季地形云的冰川期播种以增强降水建立了强有力的、有充分文献记载的科学基础。人工降雨影响评估的挑战仍然存在，但有证据表明，由于观测和计算能力最近取得了重大进展，研究界终于能够向利益相关者提供有关其所在地区人工降雨可能产生的定量降水影响的指导。我们建议进一步进行过程级评估，并结合高分辨率、良好约束的季节性云播数值模拟。
This essay is intended to provide stakeholders and news outlets with a plain-language summary of orographic cloud seeding research, new capabilities, and prospects. Specifically, we address the question of whether a widely-practiced type of weather modification, glaciogenic seeding of orographic clouds throughout the cold season, can produce an economically-useful increase in precipitation over a catchment-scale area. Our objective is to clarify current scientific understanding of how cloud seeding may affect precipitation, in terms that are more accessible than in the peer-reviewed literature. Public confidence that cloud seeding “works” is generally high in regions with operational seeding, notwithstanding decades of scientific reports indicating that the changes in precipitation are uncertain. Randomized seeding experiments have a solid statistical foundation and focus on the outcome, but, in light of the small seeding signal and the naturally noisy nature of precipitation, they generally require too many cases to be affordable, and therefore are discouraged. A complementary method, physical evaluation, examines changes in cloud and precipitation processes when seeding material is injected, and yields insights into the most suitable ambient conditions. Recent physical evaluations have established a robust, well-documented scientific basis for glaciogenic seeding of cold-season orographic clouds to enhance precipitation. The challenge of seeding impact assessment remains, but evidence is provided that, thanks to recent significant progress in observational and computational capabilities, the research community is finally on track to be able to provide stakeholders with guidance on the likely quantitative precipitation impact of cloud seeding in their region. We recommend further process-level evaluations combined with highly-resolved, well-constrained numerical simulations of seasonal cloud seeding.