Predicting the weather is one thing, but we'll have the best predictions when we can control the weather. What kind of technology would we need for that? Would we need to be full Kardashev 1 scale or could we do it sooner?
Well, there are different degrees of control to excercise over the weather. We've had rain seeding for a long time, where planes willl spray chemical particulate into moisture laden clouds in order to give the moisture something to cling to, forming droplets heavy enough to fall. In Vietnam there was a program called Operation Popeye where we used cloud seeding to extend the monsoon season. However, there have also been some treaties signed where the U.S. and the Soviets promised not to use weather modification technology as a weapon. There was also some use of silver iodide dropped from aircraft into hurricanes in order to prevent them from reaching critical speeds and dissipate them into smaller storms. Another more dubious example is hail cannons, which are thought by some to be able to use sound to disrupt hailstone formation, but no one really knows if that works. The rest is widely regarded as conspiratorial, of particular note in that category would be the HAARP installation in Alaska which some people think is a project meant to explore the use of ionization to manipulate the weather, but I don't buy it personally.
You can read more at this address if you're interested:
As for the kardashev question, I'm not sure it would take all that much energy, because there are efficiency gains to be had from the butterfly effect, but it of course depends on the magnitude of change that you might be seeking out. I think the bottleneck is more likely to be computing power and simulation ability, because to truly understand and manipulate the weather beyond heuristic means would require an understanding of every particle interaction in the atmosphere as well as the energy between them, which is probably impossible to even measure, much less simulate, at current computational capabilities or any data collection capabilities I can conceive of. In conclusion: cloud seeding is likely to become much more useful to combat storms, and through climate change we know we can do things to put a thumb on the scale of feedback loops, but I think it's greatly unlikely that we will have much fidelity anytime soon.
Predicting the weather is one thing, but we'll have the best predictions when we can control the weather. What kind of technology would we need for that? Would we need to be full Kardashev 1 scale or could we do it sooner?
Well, there are different degrees of control to excercise over the weather. We've had rain seeding for a long time, where planes willl spray chemical particulate into moisture laden clouds in order to give the moisture something to cling to, forming droplets heavy enough to fall. In Vietnam there was a program called Operation Popeye where we used cloud seeding to extend the monsoon season. However, there have also been some treaties signed where the U.S. and the Soviets promised not to use weather modification technology as a weapon. There was also some use of silver iodide dropped from aircraft into hurricanes in order to prevent them from reaching critical speeds and dissipate them into smaller storms. Another more dubious example is hail cannons, which are thought by some to be able to use sound to disrupt hailstone formation, but no one really knows if that works. The rest is widely regarded as conspiratorial, of particular note in that category would be the HAARP installation in Alaska which some people think is a project meant to explore the use of ionization to manipulate the weather, but I don't buy it personally.
You can read more at this address if you're interested:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program
As for the kardashev question, I'm not sure it would take all that much energy, because there are efficiency gains to be had from the butterfly effect, but it of course depends on the magnitude of change that you might be seeking out. I think the bottleneck is more likely to be computing power and simulation ability, because to truly understand and manipulate the weather beyond heuristic means would require an understanding of every particle interaction in the atmosphere as well as the energy between them, which is probably impossible to even measure, much less simulate, at current computational capabilities or any data collection capabilities I can conceive of. In conclusion: cloud seeding is likely to become much more useful to combat storms, and through climate change we know we can do things to put a thumb on the scale of feedback loops, but I think it's greatly unlikely that we will have much fidelity anytime soon.