Global Geographies of Weather Modification in an Era of Climate Change

As climate change impacts intensify, the practice of cloud seeding to induce precipitation and otherwise modify the weather is on the rise around the world. In 2018, for example, seven states in the western US entered into the Colorado River Basin Weather Modification Agreement to seek to augment snowpack. In response to unprecedented drought on the Yangtze River in summer 2022, the Chinese government stepped up its already extensive weather modification efforts.  Moreover, intensified weather modification efforts have contributed to geopolitical tensions. Weather modification is also associated in the public imagination with solar radiation management, a highly controversial form of geoengineering. Despite the importance of weather modification in the context of climate change, it has not attracted much recent attention from social scientists. I provide a wide-ranging and hopefully fun overview of weather modification in the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates through a geographical lens.

Emily T. Yeh, Professor of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder and the Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar presents Global Geographies of Weather Modification in an Era of Climate Change.