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Weather Modification
Weather modification is the act of intentionally manipulating or altering the weather. The most common form of weather modification is cloud seeding, which increases rainfall or snowfall, usually for the purpose of increasing the local water supply. Weather modification can also have the goal of preventing natural disaster, damaging weather, such as hail or hurricanes, from occurring; or of provoking damaging weather against an enemy, as a tactic of military or economic warfare like Operation Popeye, where clouds were Cloud seeding, seeded to prolong the monsoon in Vietnam. Weather modification in warfare has been banned by the United Nations under the Environmental Modification Convention. History A popular belief in Northern Europe was that shooting prevents hail, which thus caused many agricultural towns to fire cannons without ammunition. Veterans of the Seven Years' War, Napoleonic wars, and the American Civil War reported that rain fell after every large battle. After thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Tornado Near Anadarko, Oklahoma, On May 3, 1999
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is '' a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version is often written in one of two forms: the double-storey and single-storey . The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English, '' a'' is the indefinite article, with the alternative form ''an''. Name In English, the name of the letter is the ''long A'' sound, pronounced . Its name in most other languages matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables. History The earliest known ancestor of A is ''aleph''—the first letter of the Phoenician ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rain
Rain is a form of precipitation where water drop (liquid), droplets that have condensation, condensed from Water vapor#In Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric water vapor fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water for hydroelectricity, hydroelectric power plants, crop irrigation, and suitable conditions for many types of ecosystems. The major cause of rain production is moisture moving along three-dimensional zones of temperature and moisture contrasts known as weather fronts. If enough moisture and upward motion is present, precipitation falls from convection, convective clouds (those with strong upward vertical motion) such as cumulonimbus (thunder clouds) which can organize into narrow rainbands. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation which forces moist air to condense and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silver Iodide
Silver iodide is an inorganic compound with the formula Ag I. The compound is a bright yellow solid, but samples almost always contain impurities of metallic silver that give a grey colouration. The silver contamination arises because some samples of AgI can be highly photosensitive. This property is exploited in silver-based photography. Silver iodide is also used as an antiseptic and in cloud seeding. Structure The structure adopted by silver iodide is temperature dependent: * Below 420 K, the β phase of AgI, with the wurtzite structure, is most stable. This phase is encountered in nature as the mineral iodargyrite. * Above 420 K, the α phase becomes more stable. This motif is a body-centered cubic structure which has the silver centers distributed randomly between 6 octahedral, 12 tetrahedral and 24 trigonal sites. At this temperature, Ag+ ions can move rapidly through the solid, allowing fast ion conduction. The transition between the β and α forms repre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloud Seeding
Cloud seeding is a type of weather modification that aims to change the amount or type of precipitation, mitigate hail, or disperse fog. The usual objective is to increase rain or snow, either for its own sake or to prevent precipitation from occurring in days afterward. Cloud seeding is undertaken by dispersing substances into the air that serve as Cloud condensation nuclei, cloud condensation or ice nucleus, ice nuclei. Common agents include silver iodide, potassium iodide, and dry ice, with hygroscopic materials like table salt gaining popularity due to their ability to attract moisture. Techniques vary from static seeding, which encourages ice particle formation in supercooled clouds to increase precipitation, to dynamic seeding, designed to enhance convective cloud development through the release of latent heat. Methods of dispersion include aircraft and ground-based generators, with newer approaches involving Unmanned aerial vehicle, drones delivering electric charges to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and officially branded as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in 28 sports and 302 events, one event more than those scheduled for the 2004 Summer Olympics. This was the first time China had hosted the Olympic Games, and the third time the Summer Olympic Games had been held in East Asia, following the 1964 Summer Olympics, 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, and the 1988 Summer Olympics, 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. These were also the second Summer Olympic Games to be held in a communist state, the first being the 1980 Summer Olympics in the Soviet Union (with venues in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russia, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukraine, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussia, and Estonian Soviet Socialis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abu Dhabi Emirate
The Emirate of Abu Dhabi is one of seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates. It is the largest emirate, accounting for 87% of the nation's total land area or . Abu Dhabi also has the second-largest population of the seven emirates. In mid-2016, the emirate had a population of 2,908,000, with 551,500 being Emirati citizens, accounting for around 19% of the population. In 2023, the emirate's population had grown to 3,789,860. The city of Abu Dhabi, after which the emirate is named, is the capital of both the emirate and the federation. In the early 1970s, two important developments influenced the status of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The first was the establishment of the United Arab Emirates in December 1971, with Abu Dhabi as its initially temporary political and administrative capital. The second was the sharp increase in oil prices following the Yom Kippur War, which accompanied a change in the relationship between the oil exporting countries in the Middle East ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oman
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline faces the Arabian Sea to the southeast and the Gulf of Oman on the northeast. The exclaves of Madha and Musandam Governorate, Musandam are surrounded by the United Arab Emirates on their land borders, while Musandam’s coastal boundaries are formed by the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. The capital and largest city is Muscat. With a population of approximately 5.46 million and an area of 309,500 km2 (119,500 sq mi), Oman is the Countries with highest population, 123rd most-populous country. From the 18th century, the Omani Sultanate was Omani Empire, an empire, competing with the Portuguese Empire, Portuguese and British Empire, British empires for influence in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. At its peak in the 19th ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Ain
Al Ain () is a city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and the seat of the administrative division of the Al Ain Region. The city is Oman–United Arab Emirates border, bordered to the east by the Omani town of Al-Buraimi. Al Ain is the largest inland city in the Emirates, the List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, fourth-largest city (after Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah), and the second-largest in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The Controlled-access highway, freeways connecting Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai form a geographic triangle in the country, each city being roughly from the others. Climate and geography Al Ain is known as the "Garden City" () of Abu Dhabi, the UAE or the Persian Gulf, Gulf, due to its greenery, particularly with regard to the city's oases, parks, tree-lined avenues and decorative roundabouts, with strict height controls on new buildings, to no more than seven floors. According to one author, the oases around Al Ain and Al-Ahsa Oasis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab Emirates, seven emirates, with Abu Dhabi serving as its capital. It shares land borders with Oman to the east and northeast, and with Saudi Arabia to the southwest; as well as maritime borders in the Persian Gulf with Qatar and Iran, and with Oman in the Gulf of Oman. , the UAE has an estimated population of over 10 million, of which 11% are Emiratis; Dubai is List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, its most populous city and is an international hub. Islam is the State religion, official religion and Arabic is the official language, while English is the most spoken language and the language of business. The United Arab Emirates Oil reserves in the United Arab Emirates, oil and natural gas reserves are the world's List of countries by pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. The city is the seat of the Abu Dhabi Central Capital District, the capital city of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the UAE's List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, second-most populous city, after Dubai. The city is situated on a T-shaped island, extending into the Persian Gulf from the central-western coast of the UAE. Abu Dhabi is located on an island in the Persian Gulf, off the Central West Coast. Most of the city and the Emirate reside on the mainland connected to the rest of the country. , Abu Dhabi's urban area had an estimated population of 2.5 million, out of 3.8 million in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is headquartered in the city, and was the Sovereign wealth fund#Largest sovereign wealth funds, world's 3rd largest sovereign wealth fund in 2022. Abu Dhabi itself has over a trillion US dollars worth of assets under management in a combination of various List of coun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Rainmaking Project
The Thailand Royal Rainmaking Project (, ) was initiated in November 1955 by King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thai farmers repeatedly suffered the effects of drought. The king resolved to do something about it and proposed a solution to the dearth of rain: artificial rainmaking, or cloud seeding. The program is run by the Department of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation. There is no impact evaluation or effectiveness reported. History The king discovered that many areas faced the problem of drought. Over 82% of Thai agricultural land relied on rainfall. Thai farmers were not able to grow crops for lack of water. Although scientific evidence seems to suggest that cloud seeding does not ameliorate droughts, the Royal Rainmaking Project debuted on 20 July 1969 at the king's behest, when the first rainmaking attempt was made at Khao Yai National Park. Dry ice flakes were scattered over clouds. Reportedly, some rainfall resulted. In 1971, the government established the Artificial Ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bhumibol Adulyadej
Bhumibol Adulyadej (5 December 192713 October 2016), titled Rama IX, was King of Thailand from 1946 until Death and funeral of Bhumibol Adulyadej, his death in 2016. His reign of 70 years and 126 days is the longest of any List of Thai monarchs, Thai monarch, the longest on record of any independent Asian sovereign, and the List of longest-reigning monarchs, third-longest of any sovereign state. Born in the United States, Bhumibol spent his early life in Switzerland, in the aftermath of the 1932 Siamese revolution, which toppled Thailand's centuries-old absolute monarchy, ruled at the time by his uncle, King Prajadhipok (Rama VII). He ascended to the throne in June 1946, succeeding his brother, King Ananda Mahidol (Rama VIII), who had died under mysterious circumstances. In the course of his rule, Bhumibol presided over Thailand's transformation into a major US ally and a regional economic power. Between 1985 and 1994, Thailand was the world's fastest-growing e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
