ARTIFICIAL RAIN

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 January 1947, Page 8

ARTIFICIAL RAIN

SCIENTISTS BELIEVE THEY HAVE PRODUCED IT Sydney, Jan. 28. Scientists believe that they produced artificial rain during experiments conducted throughout yesterday. Rain fell from clouds on which they had dropped dry ice from an aeroplane at high altitudes. Two scientists, one of whom is Dr. E. B. Kraus, senior research officer of the radio physics section of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, conducted the tests in an R.A.A.F. Liberator. Efforts were made to keep the tests secret and Press representatives were barred from the R.A.A.F. ’drome from which the plane look off. Carrying about a ton of dry ice ’ n sugar bags*, scientific equipment and cameras, the Liberator flew north and climbed to 28 : 5U0 feet. The scientists and crew wore flying suits and oxygen masks. The plane flew under the clouds to make sure that rain was not already falling, and then climbed above the clouds aua dropped the ice. Rain was encour.tereu when the plane dived below the clouds again. The experimenters would not dissuss the flight, except to say, “the results were satisfactory enough to warrant further experiments. These tests are only on a small scale to determine whether large scal e experiments are practicable.” Sir Kerr Grant, professor of physics at Adelaide University, said in Adelaide tha t scientists could never produce artificial rain economically enough for it to be a practical proposition. The heat, that would have to be taken out of the water vapour in a cloud to caus e condensation represented a huge amount of energy. The only piospect of the economic production of rain was when a state of super-saturation existed in the upper-, air, but these conditions were rare.