How and with what to disperse clouds and rain clouds is a revolutionary invention. Technology for creating favorable weather ("dispersal of clouds"). Help How planes disperse clouds read

In the early morning of May 8, a revival reigned at the Chkalovsky airfield in the Moscow region. The sides were preparing for the flight, which were supposed to provide a cloudless sky on the day of the Victory Parade. I had no idea how it was done before, so I decided to sacrifice sleep and went to look.

Employees of the press service of the Russian Air Force and a small group of journalists: we are advancing to the sites where the aircraft are stationed, which will carry out meteorological control and, if necessary, throw out reagents to eliminate clouds.

In total, up to 10 An-12 and An-26 transport aircraft are involved in the work to ensure favorable weather conditions.

While we are waiting for the start of the movement, I went to climb the plane.

Cabin entrance. Crew humor.

An-12 took off for the first time in 1957. It was mass-produced until 1973. So everything here is “old school”, no fancy LCD screens.

Navigator's cabin. Probably the most best review. I have long dreamed of shooting from such a cabin in flight ...

Location FAC.

The dashboard is high, because of it little is visible even to a tall person. In other matters, there is a navigator for this.

Flight engineer position?

Guess what it is.

Oxygen cylinders: the aircraft takes off to an altitude of 9000 meters, some reagents are ejected through an open hatch, while the crew uses oxygen masks.

Former gunner's cabin. An-12 was originally a military transport aircraft.

Navigator's cabin.

An-26 cockpit.

Finally, movement began: a truck drove up to one of the planes and began to unload something from there.

These were cylinders of liquid nitrogen, one of the reagents used to disperse clouds of reagents.

The balloon is connected to a "fine ice particle generator". A spray tube is brought out of the side. Under pressure, a jet of deeply cooled air is ejected through it, with a temperature of -90 ° C, the moisture from which the cloud consists, while crystallizing and falling out in the form of precipitation.

Next, boxes with cement powder are loaded. They are thrown away from high altitude manually above the area of ​​cumulus clouds of vertical development.

When falling, such a box opens and the cement contained in them, crumbling, performs two functions: firstly, it creates a force opposite to the ascending air currents, due to which such clouds develop upwards, and secondly, the particles of this powder collect moisture, become heavier and carry water drops with them , causing precipitation and thus destroying the cloud.

This method is used not only against "high" cumulus clouds, but also against so-called warm ones: liquid nitrogen is ineffective at temperatures environment above -0.5°C.

Clouds can not only be made to rain. If you overdo it with reagents, they will last longer than usual. Sometimes they do this if there is a risk that, during acceleration, precipitation will occur exactly where it is not needed, but it is more likely that the wind will sweep the clouds oversaturated with reagents away from the “protected” territory.

After loading, the tankers arrived.

Aircraft can stay in the air for up to 9 hours.

The weather did not predict precipitation, but several reconnaissance aircraft still had to be in the air on May 9, in order to exclude even the slightest chance of precipitation before the fireworks.

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Clouds over Moscow in case of rainy weather are dispersed three times a year: on Victory Day (May 9), on Russia Day (June 12) and on City Day (the first Saturday of September). On a holiday at 4:00, the sky rises aerial reconnaissance, which finds out the meteorological situation. If they go to the capital thunderclouds, then planes with cylinders filled with reagents rise from one of the airports near Moscow to disperse them. They are connected to generators of fine particles, which, through a spray tube under high pressure a jet of air with reagents is thrown onto the clouds, the temperature of the reagents is −90°C. After that, heavy rainfall almost immediately falls in the area.

What are reagents for?

The microparticles of the sprayed reagent act as centers of crystallization - water droplets that make up the cloud freeze on them, and when such a crystal becomes heavy enough, it falls down, turning into water on approach to the ground. As a result, over the area where the reagents are sprayed, it begins to pour almost immediately heavy rain, and the clouds no longer reach the place of celebration.

What planes are involved in cloud dispersal?

To ensure a cloudless sky on the day of celebrations in Moscow, transport aircraft are used - Il-18, An-12, An-26, An-28, An-30, An-32, An-72, Su-30 and M-101 "Gzhel".

What reagents are used to disperse clouds?

Depending on the type of cloudiness, liquid nitrogen, dry ice, granular carbon dioxide and special cement are used. Dry ice is used for the lower cloud layer, liquid nitrogen is used against nimbostratus clouds, and the most powerful rain clouds are dispersed with silver iodide.

Liquid nitrogen is ineffective at ambient temperatures above -0.5°C. For such cases, as well as for cumulus clouds, special cement is used.

Are spray reagents safe?

According to experts, all reagents used for this purpose are harmless.

They were undertaken by meteorologists back in the days of the USSR. Back in the 1970s, special Tu-16 Cyclone jet aircraft, created on the basis of the Tu-16 strategic bomber, were used for this. The Russian cloud dispersal service is considered one of the best in the world.

Technology for creating favorable weather conditions was developed in 1990 by specialists State Committee on hydrometeorology and control natural environment(Goskomgidromet), and since 1995, after the first large-scale use during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Victory, it began to be used quite widely.

Head of hygiene laboratory atmospheric air Research Institute of Human Ecology and Environmental Hygiene of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Migmar Pinigin stated that liquid nitrogen is concentrated at low temperatures the gas of the same name, the content of which in the atmosphere is about 78%. According to him, "the question of the harmfulness of this reagent disappears by itself." As for granular carbon dioxide, its formula - CO2 - coincides with the formula of carbon dioxide, which is also present in the atmosphere. Head of climate program World Fund wildlife Alexey Kokorin assured that people are not threatened even by the spraying of cement powder: "When dispersing clouds we are talking on minimum doses.

The reagent exists in the atmosphere for less than a day. After entering the cloud, it is washed out of it along with precipitation, meteorologists are sure.

According to Alexander Drobyshevsky, Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, "the use of reagents, in terms of pollution, does not affect the state of the earth's surface in any way. The number of reagent particles falling per unit area of ​​the earth is negligible, it is hundreds of times less than the natural level of dust deposition."

However, this technique also has its opponents. Thus, ecologists public organization"Ecodefense" argue that there is a relationship between the dispersal of clouds and heavy rains that fall in the following days. According to the head of the organization Vladimir Slivyak, " modern science are not yet able to talk about the consequences of such interference, and they can be very different." In this regard, the position of environmentalists is unequivocal: "Such actions must be stopped." The answer of meteorologists is no less unambiguous. and state supervision of Roshydromet Valery Stasenko, "the conclusions of environmentalists that rainy weather is a consequence of our activities are nothing more than speculation. To draw such conclusions, it is necessary to measure the level of aerosol in the atmosphere, its concentration, and to establish the type of aerosol. Without these data, such statements are unfounded."

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

As many probably remember, Dr. Felix Honniker, the character in Kurt Vonnegut's ironic dystopia Cat's Cradle, created the mysterious and terrible ice-nine. One had only to throw one crystal of this ice into a puddle, as all the moisture on Earth, including atmospheric, began to crystallize and harden already at a positive temperature. Fiction is fiction, but the creation of Dr. Honniker has a certain real prototype. The writer himself was inspired by the works of his own brother Bernard, a famous chemist and meteorologist who figured out how to cause artificial rain or snow.

Laboratory Before the start of active influence on the clouds, a reconnaissance of the state of clouds is carried out from a special aircraft-meteorological laboratory. A measuring and computing complex is installed on board the aircraft, which receives and processes information from various sensors

Ice torch The photo shows a liquid nitrogen sprayer installed on the An-26 aircraft

General form fine ice particle generator

Shooting at the clouds In the photo - aircraft devices for firing squibs with silver iodide. Structurally, this "weapon" is similar to installations for shooting false thermal targets.

Ice-forming aerosol generator GLA-105 - based on a 105-mm firework

Based on staff launchers- single barrel

Based on standard launchers - multi-barreled

More precisely, Bernard Vonnegut was just one of the American scientists working in this field. Another researcher, physicist Vincent Schaefer, experimented with a supercooled cloud artificially created in a chamber (that is, consisting of a water suspension at sub-zero temperatures, but not taking a crystalline form of water suspension). To force the water to change its state of aggregation, he “blew” finely dispersed substances (salt, talc, dust) into the cloud, the particles of which could become crystallization centers. But for some reason they didn't. Finally, Schaefer, having decided that the temperature in the chamber was not low enough, threw a piece of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide CO2) into it and ... a thick gray fog swirled in the moisture-saturated air, and then it began to snow. Water droplets spontaneously crystallized and precipitated. An effect with a similar result, but of a slightly different nature (we will talk about this later), was also achieved by Bernard Vonnegut - however, with the help of not dry ice, but silver iodide (AgJ). These two laboratory experiments were carried out in 1946 (theoretical work has been carried out both in the USA and in other countries since the beginning of the 20th century). On November 13 of that year, six pounds of dry ice was sprayed from an airplane over a cloud that was floating along the slopes of Mount Greylock in eastern Massachusetts. The cloud was covered with snow. Thus, the first step in the field of active influence on atmospheric processes was taken.

From Chernobyl to Venice

"First practical work on the impact on the weather began in the USSR back in the 1960s,” says Viktor Petrovich Korneev, director of the Autonomous Non-Commercial Association (ANO) Agency of Atmospheric Technologies, “and it so happened historically that we have most actively developed technologies for artificially reducing precipitation. Back in the first half of the 1980s, an experimental production laboratory was created at the Moscow City Executive Committee, which, in particular, was tasked with reducing the amount of snow falling over the capital - the city leaders wanted to save on cleaning and removal. In addition, during the days of parades and demonstrations on May 1, 9 and November 7, work was organized to improve weather conditions. To do this, it was necessary to make the clouds ‘destined’ for Moscow rain down somewhere outside the ring road.”

A special stage was the elimination of the consequences of the accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Then the task was set to prevent the washout into the Dnieper and Pripyat of radioactive dust covering the soil in the disaster zone. With the help of special reagents, it was possible to bind the dust, protecting it from scattering by the wind. But torrents of rain posed a serious danger. An-12 transport planes and even long-range Tu-95 bombers flying to Chernobyl from the Chkalovsky airfield were sent to fight rain clouds.

At that time, big plans were being made. For example, a project was being developed to restore water reserves Aral Sea by increasing the level of precipitation in the mountains, from where the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers that fed the dying sea originate. But with the collapse of the USSR, research work in this area has declined sharply. True, as it turned out, Russian technologies turned out to be very interesting for some foreign partners. In the 1990s, work to increase precipitation was carried out in Syria, and in the last decade - in Iran. Our experts also participated in the fog dissipation project on key sections of the Venice-Trieste motorway (Italy) and shared their experience with Chinese colleagues on the eve of the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Russia also periodically has to deal with clouds and fogs. In 1995-1997, the government of Yakutia became interested in the possibility of increasing the amount of precipitation. In the short but hot Siberian summer, this republic experienced a lack of moisture in pastures, which created problems for local livestock breeders. As V.P. Korneev, Moscow specialists who arrived in Yakutia were met by a representative of the regional authorities, an employee of the Institute for the Problems of the North and a local shaman, who very thoughtfully stated his own point of view on the water cycle in nature. However, the most famous and most demanded area of ​​work of ANO "Atmospheric Technologies" and their colleagues from the Central Aerological Observatory is still what is popularly called "cloud dispersal" over large metropolitan areas, and above all over Moscow.

Bringing up the cold

Almost all methods of influencing hydrometeorological processes are based on the use of an unstable state of the cloudy atmosphere. First of all, we are talking about the phase instability of cloudy water - this, as already mentioned, is the presence in clouds that are above the zero isotherm (the so-called height where the atmosphere "passes" through a temperature of 0 ° C), small droplets of moisture, which continues to be a liquid , despite the negative temperature (up to -40°С) of the ambient air. To cause precipitation, it is required to make this water crystallize.

This can be done in two ways: either to sharply cool the cloud by forcing droplets of supercooled moisture to spontaneous crystallization under the action of rapid cooling (refrigerants are used for this), or to introduce crystallization centers into it.

The most popular refrigerants for many decades have been dry ice, which Vincent Schaeffer experimented with, and liquid nitrogen (N2). The evaporation temperature for solid carbon dioxide is -78°C, and for liquid nitrogen -169°C. With all their advantages, refrigerants have a number of disadvantages, therefore, sometimes a reagent is used that has a different mechanism of action - silver iodide (AgJ). The crystals of this substance are almost isomorphic to ice crystals and perfectly serve as crystallization centers for water and steam. This effect was just discovered by Bernard Vonnegut, so that silver iodide can be considered a distant prototype of "ice-nine" from the novel "Cat's Cradle".

As soon as crystals appear in a supercooled cloud, they immediately “eat up” the surrounding vapor; the pressure around the crystal surface drops, which causes the liquid moisture in the cloud to evaporate; the vapor is reabsorbed by the growing crystal, and so on. The heavier crystals are dragged down by the Earth's gravity. With this method it is also possible to prevent the formation of large droplets of supercooled water, which sooner or later can turn into a large hail. In addition, the use of reagents that form crystals from a supercooled liquid can not only cause precipitation, but also ... delay it. If the cloud is "reseeded" with reagents, then due to the occurrence of too high a concentration of crystallization nuclei, precipitation will be slowed down. So the “fair weather specialists” always have a choice: make the cloud rain before the wind drives it over the protected area, or, on the contrary, “reseed” it so that it rains after the cloud has gone away. As a rule, the second method is applied to frontal clouds.

Each type of reagent has its own dispersion technology, or "seeding". Granules of "dry ice" with sizes from 0.2 to 2 cm are obtained directly on board the aircraft by crushing industrial briquettes. This ice crumb is dispersed above the clouds using bunker or auger devices.

To crystallize cloudy water with liquid nitrogen, liquid-nitrogen aircraft generators of fine ice particles GMCHL-A are used. Under pressure, liquid nitrogen is supplied to the atomizer installed overboard the aircraft and discharged into the atmosphere, creating there a “torch” of deeply cooled air with a temperature of -90°C. The water that enters it instantly crystallizes.

For seeding clouds with an aerosol of silver iodide, squibs are used, which are fired by special automatic devices.

cemented sky

Back in the 1950s, at the dawn of Soviet experiments on active influence on atmospheric processes, researchers faced a problem. Only a few minutes after the spraying of the reagents, the crew of the aircraft already found it difficult to identify the processed cloud among many other similar ones. And without this, it was not easy to track the effectiveness of the work and prevent re-seeding. The solution was found in one of the many kerosene shops in those days. Blue was bought there - a powder widely used by housewives for light tinting bed linen when boiling and washing. It was assumed that if, together with the reagents, blue was sprayed over the cloud, then a bluish spot would appear on it, which would play the role of a label. However, when it came to practical experiments, it turned out that the clouds, on which the bluing was poured, simply disappeared after a while, dissipated. The disappointment that arose at first was soon replaced by the joy of discovery. After all, as it turned out, was found new way impact on the atmosphere - dynamic.

It is mainly used in the fight against cumulonimbus clouds of vertical development (convective clouds). These clouds, rising tall "towers" upward, can be destroyed with the same energy of atmospheric instability that causes them. Simply put, an upward flow of air, as a result of which a convective cloud grows, must be opposed by an oncoming movement, which is capable of destroying this cloud. Such a movement can be created by dropping a coarse powder reagent with the properties of an adsorbent. It can be, for example, salt or, which is most often used in domestic practice, cement. Swelling with moisture, the heavy powder will break through the cloud, dragging droplets of water with it. Cement spraying is used not only in the fight against convective clouds, but also to influence the so-called warm clouds below the zero isotherm. Crystallizing reagents are powerless against them - even liquid nitrogen, which has the highest temperature threshold of activity, can work at a temperature of the cloudy environment not higher than -0.5 ° C.

The use of cement powder as a reagent raises concerns among general public- shouldn't we all wear respirators when they make good weather? “For the respiratory organs, the spraying of cement does not pose any danger, since after processing the clouds, the concentration of powder particles in the air, already oversaturated with aerosols, is negligible - only 1–2 particles per m3,” V.P. reassures us. Korneev. And yet, this method cannot be recognized as 100% safe. The fact is that the powder reagent is dropped from the aircraft in the form of cardboard and foam containers measuring 26 x 26 x 38 cm and weighing 25-30 kg. The container provides for automatic forced opening, after which it breaks up into fragments that are safe for people and buildings. However, on June 12, 2008, when events were held to ensure sunny weather in Moscow on the occasion of the Day of Russia, an unopened container of cement broke through the roof of a private house in the Narofominsk district of the Moscow region. Fortunately, no one died, but everyone had to make sure once again that there is no fail-safe technology.