The Reading scientists, led by Prof Giles Harrison, have in the meantime been growing a distinct method, by which an electrical cost is utilized to make droplets stick to one another and so rapidly develop giant sufficient to fall as rain. Harrison, a bespectacled atmospheric physics professional, harbours a long-standing fascination with pure science – and an enthusiasm for testing new concepts.
The know-how he and his workforce have developed has been examined not in the deserts of the Gulf states, however in the quite greener English countryside. In 2020, at the college’s farm in Sonning, Berkshire, a primary experiment was carried out by Harrison’s workforce, alongside mechanical and electrical engineers from the University of Bath, by which cost was launched into fog utilizing electrical emitters.
The following 12 months, additional exams had been carried out at Bottom Barn Farm close to Castle Cary in Somerset. Here, above a verdant panorama hardly ever troubled by drought, unmanned aerial automobiles with specifically developed cost emitters that would launch optimistic or unfavorable ions on demand had been launched into one other foggy sky.
It was, wrote Reading’s Dr Keri Nicoll afterwards, “an important first step in determining whether charging cloud droplets might be helpful in aiding rainfall in water-stressed parts of the world”.
The check flights demonstrated that the fog’s droplet dimension may very well be altered by charging, “which ultimately means that it may be possible to use charge to influence cloud drops and thus rainfall,” wrote Nicoll.
She informed The National, a UAE newspaper: “What we’re doing here is something that’s completely different. We are using very small aircraft, which means that things are actually much more cost effective, and we’re simply charging up what’s already there.”
The promise behind charging droplets, or particles, was that the method may nicely work alongside the present cloud-seeding operation, making it extra environment friendly at producing rainfall, she stated.
