Cloud Seeding in Iran by Using Special Home-Made Materials

“Our company was inaugurated in 2018. We concentrated on producing special materials for cloud seeding, a path which has been successful,” Majid Aliabadi, a faculty member of Islamic Azad University’s Birjand branch, the vice-president of the University for research and technology affairs and the manager of a knowledge-based company active in the field of cloud seeding, told ANA.

Noting that the first sample of the tested product was presented to the Iranian Energy Ministry, he said, “This sample was sent to the Russian Weather Observatory where nucleation tests were conducted. Based on the test's results we were able to receive a certificate for this product. Based on the announcement of the Russian Weather Observatory, each gram of this material creates 1,420 rain-making nuclei, and in the next samples we sent to Russia, this amount increased to 4,000 rain-making nuclei.”

“At present, these materials are used nationwide in cloud seeding operations,” Aliabadi said.

Last year, Iranian researchers at Islamic Azad University’s Birjand branch for the first time in the country had succeeded in designing and building ground generators for cloud seeding.

“The ground generators for cloud seeding have now successfully passed the stages of laboratory and field tests and are ready for mass-production on an industrial scale,” said Aliabadi at the time.

He added that in these generators, which are installed on high altitudes and mountainous areas, special formulations of special cloud seeding materials are used along with propane gas and acetone solution to create rain-making nuclei.

“The generators can produce hundreds of billions of rain-making nuclei every minute which are directed into the clouds by the rising currents in susceptible areas and cause an increase in the ice nuclei and condensation in the cloud, which subsequently accelerates and increases raining and the amount of rainfall,” Aliabadi said.

Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that improves a cloud’s ability to produce rain or snow by introducing tiny ice nuclei into certain types of subfreezing clouds. These nuclei provide a base for snowflakes to form.

After cloud seeding takes place, the newly formed snowflakes quickly grow and fall from the clouds back to the surface of the Earth, increasing snowpack and streamflow.  

Cloud seeding can be done from ground-based generators or aircraft.

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