In the midst of a prolonged heatwave and months of drought, Mexico’s government has turned to cloud seeding to increase rainfall.
According to The Guardian:
The project, which began in July, involves planes flying into clouds to release silver iodide particles which then, in theory, will attract additional water droplets and increase rain or snowfall.
Cloud seeding in Mexico is “combatting the effects of drought in rural areas and contributing to refilling aquifers”, says the agriculture ministry, which has been carrying out cloud seeding at least once a year since 2020.
The government has claimed significant success, saying the project was 98% effective and even helped extinguish forest fires in 2021.
But Mexico’s leading cloud physicists have cast significant doubt on the viability of the technology and experts across fields warn against simple solutions to the effects of climate change.
“There is no evidence that cloud seeding techniques allow for the increase of precipitation over important economic zones, nor is there certainty about effects outside the targeted zone,” write Fernando García García and Guillermo Montero Martínez, cloud physicists at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (Unam).
While the Mexican government claimed cloud seeding in 2021 increased precipitation by up to 40% above forecasts, the scientists say rain forecasts are highly variable and evidence does not consistently link cloud seeding and precipitation increases.
Mexican scientists oversaw the world’s longest cloud seeding study from 1948 to 1970 and still failed to produce conclusive results.
Cloud seeding, “should only be considered as one element of an integrated strategy for managing water resources”, write the cloud physicists.
The agricultural ministry did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about cloud seeding and water scarcity.
Farmers in northern Mexico, currently suffering “severe drought” as designated by Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua), are open to anything that could bring more rain, says Álvaro Bours Cabrera, the president of the Association of Farmers’ Organizations of Southern Sonora (AOASS).
“But we are skeptical,” says Bours. “We would prefer the government brought back investment in the irrigation distribution networks to increase efficiency and save water.”
Bours says the end of the agricultural ministry’s insurance program for farmers against extreme weather events in 2021 has left farmers at the whims of a rapidly changing climate.
