Engineers and meteorologists from Nevada have joined forces to create the first autonomous cloud seeding platform - using drones to control the weather.
Cloud seeding is a technique where small particles are dropped into a cloud from an aircraft or rocket to alter the microphysical processes going on inside and make it rain (or snow).
Research on the subject has been ongoing for more than a century, but it's still not clear how well it actually works in reality - a cloud might produce rain after being seeded, but it's hard to know if that cloud would have just produced rain anyway.
Despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness, the promise of weather control has lead to a lot of cash being pumped into various cloud seeding schemes. The most famous attempt was probably in 2008 during the Summer Olympics, when China attempted to use cloud seeding to ensure that clouds dropped their rain before passing over the opening and closing ceremonies.
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