Russian Air Force Capable of Making Artificial Rain

Endless and unbearable heat that has been tormenting Russia for weeks non-stop makes many people wonder whether there is any possibility to escape from hot summer temperatures.

Photo: Russian Air Force Capable of Making Artificial Rain

Test pilot Alexander Akimenkov, who studies the issues of artificial climate change, said that just one squadron of fighter jets could solve the problem of draught on Russia's entire European territory. The pilot believes that combat aviation can easily shower Russia with rains.

It turns out, though, that Russia's Air Force does not have any combat planes designed to struggle against the draught. Aviation can be used to disperse clouds when there is a need to have the clear blue sky for an important national event. The planes drop chemicals on the clouds and they eventually disappear. The chemicals are provided to the Air Force by civil laboratories of the Russian Meteorological Service and a number of research institutes. Civil specialists board military planes to conduct the chemical attack on the clouds.

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However, pilot Akimenkov claims that practically all Russian combat planes are equipped with thermal traps which are used in combat action to mislead infra-red guidance missiles.

Meteorologists find such an assumption ridiculous. If only it could be possible to make rain happen, the military would have done it. "Russian Air Forces does not have any specialists to either make or destroy rain clouds. They use meteorologists for that," a specialist said.

A senior specialist of the Russian Meteorological Service said that the pilot does not understand what he is talking about.

"Dispersing clouds with the help of chemical substances and provoking artificial rain above the territory where there is not even a cloud, as it is now above Moscow - these are two completely different things. We do know how to accomplish the first goal, but we have serious problems as far as the second one is concerned. Scientists do not know how to provoke rain. If they did, Sahara would be a garden then," the specialist said.

"It is possible to receive artificial rain with the help of heated air. One would have to use large fan heaters to heat up the air near the ground. It is a very expensive initiative. For example, about 10,000 tons of coal would have to be burnt to produce one centimeter of precipitation on the territory of one square kilometer. It goes without saying that it is not a way out, the specialist said.

Another scientist put forward an idea to build a giant tube the height of 500 meters. Powerful fans would pump hot air up the tube, the air would get cool above the ground and would thus create rain clouds. However, it is hardly possible to build such a tube, not to mention the fact that the rain would cost a fortune.

Modern science knows several rain-making methods indeed. However, for the time being it is still impossible to make rain fall out of clear blue sky. A group of German and Swiss scientists, for example, developed a new method of creating artificial clouds with the help of a small power laser beam and a wave of certain length. If the research ends successfully, it will be possible for humans to control weather and make rain fall when it is needed, even if there is not even a cloud in the sky.

Komsomolskaya Pravda