Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
Weather Forecasting
Weather Forecasting: _ Figure above shows overview of modern weather forecasting tools including satellites, radar systems, and computer models. ______ “A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.” ― Marcel Proust “It only takes one flap of a butterfly’s wings to set off a tornado on the other side of the world.” — Edward Lorenz ______ Section-1 Prologue: Since the dawn of human existence, the sky has been our grand stage. Long before there were cities, written languages, or even the idea of “science,” people tilted their faces toward the heavens and watched the eternal performance of sun, moon, wind, and clouds. The weather was the most immediate, intimate force shaping daily life. It determined whether our ancestors could hunt or gather food, whether they might face warmth or cold, safety or peril. To them, the sky was not an abstract concept; it was as […]
Cloud Seeding
Cloud Seeding: _ _ Section-1 Prologue: In the 1956 movie The Rainmaker, Burt Lancaster plays a con man catering to the dreams of spinster Katharine Hepburn. And while both stars triumph in the end — the rain does fall, and she comes out of her shell. In Hindu tradition, mortals prayed and performed elaborate rituals to please Indra, the god of rain. Legend has it that musician Tansen’s melodious voice could summon showers from cloudless skies. Humans have long sought to purposefully alter such atmospheric phenomena as clouds, rain, snow, hail, lightning, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and cyclones. The modern era of scientific weather modification began in 1946 with work by Vincent J. Schaefer and Irving Langmuir at the General Electric Research Laboratories in Schenectady, N.Y. Schaefer discovered that when dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) pellets were dropped into a cloud composed of water droplets in a deep-freeze box, the […]
