World Weather Control Not Yet Planned

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31832, 9 November 1968, Page 1

World Weather Control Not Yet Planned

No schemes for modification of the weather over large areas of the world were planned as far as he knew, said Dr William O. Davis, head of the plans and requirements division of the United States Government agency, Environmental Science Services Administration, in Christchurch yesterday. “Accurate forecasting is essential for large-scale weather modification, although pin - point weather forecasting followed by weather modification is not necessarily a logical step,”

said Dr Davis, who has just returned from his first visit to Antarctica. “Weather modification on a large scale is fraught With difficulties, even if ail the scientific problems are solved. For instance, even in a small-scale weather modification operation where rain is made to fall on one county, that county may complain that too much rain fell, or a neighbouring county may complain that it was deprived of rain which would have fallen on that county if there had been no weather modification.

“It is easy to imagine the opinions and attitudes that could arise if weather modification involved a large area of the world’s surface involving several countries.” Dr Davis said weather fore

casting was still a matter of pfobabilities it was possible to predict ikrith 70 per cent accuracy, but unless forecasts were practically 100 per cent accurate weather modification on a large scale could have chaotic results. “Weather modification on a large scale will be done, I feel, through the world meteorological service. It is not generally realised that the United States exchanges data and pictures from weather satellites through teleprinter services with other countries, including Russia, all the time and that weather information was being sent to Cuba even during the missile bases crisis," he said. Antarctica was important in weather forecasting because it was a land mass in clear, unpolluted air. “The weather in the southern hemisphere comes from over Antarctica, and it also influences the weather in the northern hemisphere. The

South Pole is much colder than the North Pole because it is a land mat '.

"The Antarctic provides a huge, uncomplicated weather source. Other sources studied in the world-wid<' meteorological service are complicated by heat from cities and pollution,” Dr Davis said.

Other work done in Antarctica by his organisation included seismological surveys, Dr Davis said. “There are a great many tremors aind small earthquakes there, and there are two active volcanoes. It is possible that earthquakes should not be controlled they could be safety-valves. “A pattern may be that areas which have continualtremors, such as Los Angeles, are safer from the point of view of destructive earthquakes, than San Francisco, which has practically no seismic activity but was hit by a disastrous earthquake,” Dr Davis said.