[gimme1ibertee]

I often wondered why cloud seeding wasn’t used in locations suffering from prolonged,severe drought,such as many African countries. I’m not a big science buff,so I never understood why cloud seeding wasn’t more widely used. The article mentioned silver iodide....is that related to salt in some way? Sorry to be so dense...just curious.

[stormer]

Cloud seeding is only effective where there is significant moisture already present in the atmosphere. The halide crystals act as precipitation nuclei and promote condensation. In hyper-arid environments cloud seeding is ineffective.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

AgI has a crystalline structure, similar to ice, that facilitates the formation of ice crystals in clouds which eventually produce precipitation if condidtions are right.

I would think the dry climate of Saharan countries would negate the formation of clouds in the first place, so no medium to make rain.

[mamelukesabre]

Ya gotta have a cloud, before you can seed it.

The only thing cloud seeding does, is make a cloud drop rain BEFORE it would naturally do so. So for example...

If the prevailing wind is west to east, and the people in colorado seed the clouds, then nebraska will get rain that was supposed to fall on iowa. In china, they didn’t create rain where there wasn’t any. They merely stole rain from somewhere and gave it to someone else.