When Hurricane Florence slammed into the North Carolina coast in 2018, I don’t remember this same level of chatter and confusion. Experts now say that the level of misinformation seen this fall after Hurricanes Helene and Milton may be a new normal.

As more people are get their news from social platforms, it’s harder to separate fact from fiction. More than half of U.S. adults (54 percent) say they at least sometimes get news from social media, which is up slightly compared with the last few years.

In this fragmented media environment, we all have access to seemingly endless sources of information. But is all that we read really true?

So let’s talk more about the weather.

We reached out to two climate scientists to understand more about the ways we are currently modifying the weather in the U.S. Yes, it’s real. No, we can’t “create” storms or modify the weather in big ways. But yes, geoengineering is being considered as a response to global warming.

The two theories we’ve heard most people talk about when it comes to weather modification are cloud seeding and geoengineering.

“Cloud seeding and geoengineering (climate intervention) are two different categories of humans trying to control the weather,” Alan Robock, a climatologist and professor of atmospheric science at Rutgers University, explained. “Cloud seeding takes place in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) where we live, and involves spraying silver iodide particles into clouds in order to produce more rain or snow.”

He said that there is no evidence that it works, but that it is a big business.

“There are claims that over mountains in winter that cloud seeding can slightly increase snow cover, but I remain to be convinced,” Robuck said. “If it worked, a risk would be that it would steal rain from a location downwind.”

I’ve been asked in interviews before about “chemtrails” or what people believe to be chemicals released from airplanes. Yes, geoenigneering, or climate intervention is being considered as a response to global warming. But it’s not what has been portrayed in the rumor mill.

“Geoengineering is a proposed scheme to emulate volcanic eruptions by creating a cloud of sulfuric acid droplets in the stratosphere, above the troposphere,” Robuck explained. “Because there is no rain there, the particles would last much longer.  We know that large volcanic eruptions produce clouds that reflect sunlight and cool the surface for a year or two, until the cloud fall out of the atmosphere.”

He conducts indoor research with computer modeling on this type of technology, and have come up with a long list of risks that you can read here.

“Nobody is doing it outside, as the technology to get the sulfur up to the stratosphere, presumably with airplanes, does not exist,” he told us, affirming that there is no such thing as chemtrails.

We asked if we should be excited or skeptical about this research.

“Perhaps in a decade or two, geoengineering might be attempted, but society would have to weigh the risks of doing it versus the risks of not doing it,” he said.  “We still need more research to quantify those risks.”

Bart Geerts, a professor in the department of atmospheric science at the University of Wyoming, confirmed that cloud seeding is being conducted in winter months over mountains in the Western U.S. to help increase the snowpack and that seeding is also happening in the Great Plains to help suppress hail damage.

You can find a map of current seeding activities here. Geerts mentioned that the amount of research is still quite small with about 5-10 companies active at any one time…

Source: Don’t Fall For These Climate Rumors