이 에피소드에 관해
The Great Salt Lake has lost more than half its surface area since 1850, and the snowpack that's supposed to refill it is disappearing too. This past winter was the worst in at least 50 years, with precipitation increasingly falling as rain instead of snow.
In this episode of Disasterproof, we go on the ground with Rainmaker, a company using autonomous drones to seed clouds with silver iodide and coax more snow out of the sky. Rainmaker says it's the first company in history to unambiguously prove it's inducing precipitation, and it's now working with the state of Utah to try to reverse the decline of the Great Salt Lake within the decade.
Cloud seeding itself isn't new, the U.S. has been doing it for over 70 years. What's changed is the urgency, and the technology now being used to validate it. We also look at the Aral Sea's cautionary tale, and sit in on Rainmaker's "Save Our Snow" pitch to a room full of investors, skiers, and scientists who all want to know the same thing: can this actually work?
Chapters:
00:00 The Great Salt Lake's Vanishing Act
01:54 On the Ground With a Snow Scientist
04:04 70 Years of Cloud Seeding, Reinvented
05:55 Inside Rainmaker's Operations Center
07:16 How Silver Iodide Seeds a Cloud
08:32 A Live Flight Over a Cow Field
09:43 Proving the Precipitation Is Real
10:30 The Aral Sea's Warning
11:40 Project Save Our Snow
12:32 Q&A: Funding, Ethics, and Skepticism
14:38 Fact vs. Fear on Cloud Seeding
