A CONTROVERSIAL rain-making process using electricity to ionise clouds has yielded promising results in a Queensland trial. It is indicated that rainfall had increased by up to 26 per cent. Australian Rain Corporation part-owner Matt Handbury said the results, though not conclusive, had encouraged the company to press on with a bigger trial in South Australia. “This is the sort of innovative breakthrough that we should be looking for,” Mr Handbury said. “It’s low-cost, environmentally friendly, low-impact, flexible, targeted technology for providing water. It creates environmental rain.”

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CLOUD seeding trials aimed at increasing rainfall over Brisbane water catchments will continue next summer, even though researchers are unsure what recent tests have produced. The State Government is spending $7.6 million on research aimed specifically at increasing water storage in Wivenhoe and Somerset dams, two of Brisbane’s major supplies. Since mid-January a seeding aircraft has made almost daily passes over the area.

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BRISBANE has had such a wet summer it has stymied efforts by scientists to determine if cloud seeding will work in subtropical conditions. Another quirky problem is that by washing particulates out of the air, the rain has virtually made atmospheric conditions too clean for the tests. Cloud seeders prefer to work in dirty air, air with particulates to which silver iodide crystals or salts fired into the cloud will stick

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SHOWERS have fallen after the first two flights of Queensland’s cloud seeding trial. But scientists have yet to determine whether the precipitation occurred naturally or was caused by the seeding on Wednesday and yesterday. Paul Brady, managing director of MIPD, the company doing the seeding, said yesterday that the project would be a success.

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Drinking water supply has been restored to more than 214,000 people in Jilin Province after artificial rain fell in northeast China, which is currently in the grip of drought. Some 113,000 heads of livestock also have access to drinking water temporarily as water began to fill dried up wells after the latest rainmaking campaign induced 630 million tons of rainfall across the province, according to the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters.

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THE Queensland government will begin cloud seeding in the state’s drought-stricken south-east by the end of the year, hoping to boost rainfall by up to 30 per cent. Water Minister Craig Wallace today said the first aircraft would drop seeding material over the south-east’s dams, including Somerset and Wivenhoe, from November.

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Updated on Friday, May 18, 2007 at 10:11AM by stevem

The University of Southern Queensland is to spearhead research into cloud seeding which is set to be used as a template around Australia.

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Updated on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 06:40PM by stevem

Updated on Friday, April 20, 2007 at 09:51AM by stevem

Updated on Friday, April 20, 2007 at 12:02PM by stevem

Updated on Friday, April 20, 2007 at 12:13PM by stevem

Updated on Friday, April 20, 2007 at 12:33PM by stevem

Updated on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 09:34AM by stevem

Updated on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 09:40AM by stevem

“The impact of human activities on the Yangtze water ecology is largely irreversible,” said Yang Guishan, a researcher of the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one of the chief editors of the report. “It’s a pressing job to regulate such activities in all the Yangtze drainage areas and promote harmonious development of man and nature.” Although the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest water storage facility, has reduced flood risks in the middle reaches, the risk of flooding remains high in the lower reaches, he said. The report also assessed the Three Gorges Dam project, showing its huge reservoir is seriously polluted by pesticides, fertilizers and sewage from passenger boats.

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“The main objective of Snowy Hydro’s research is to determine the effectiveness of cloud seeding for augmenting natural snowfalls and increasing inflows into storage of the Snowy Mountains Scheme,” Mr Macfarlane said. Mr Denholm said that the cloud seeding project was unique because of the innovative technology developed to deliver the seeding agents, as well as the chemical and statistical methods being used to determine the effectiveness of the program.

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WHILE much of drought-stricken Australia debates whether cloud-seeding is effective, Tasmania’s west coast community complains it works too well. West Coast Mayor Darryl Gerrity said cloud-seeding - the use of chemicals to make rain - by power and water utility Hydro Tasmania was damaging tourism and making life wetter than nature intended.

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