Other projects have explored “terrain modification”—whether planting trees or building earth barriers in specific locations could encourage cloud formation. Giles Harrison at the University of Reading is investigating whether electric currents released into clouds could encourage raindrops to stick. There’s also a lot of work on computer simulation. Youssef Wehbe, a UAE programme officer, talks to me about his vision of the future: a pair of AI-powered drones, one taking cloud measurements and the other printing seed material tailored to a particular cloud—as if on the fly.
One of this year’s fellows particularly captivated me. Guillaume Matras, who worked at French arms company Thales before moving to the United Arab Emirates, hopes to make it rain by shooting a giant laser into the sky. Wehbe describes the approach as “high risk.” I think he means “it might not work,” not “it might set the whole atmosphere on fire.” Either way, I’m sold.
So after my cloud-seeding flight, I get a ride to Zayed Military City, a military base between Al Ain and Abu Dhabi, to visit the secret, government-funded research lab where Matras works. They take my passport at the gate to the intricate, and before I can enter the lab itself, they ask me to lock my phone in a locker that is also a Faraday cage—completely sealed off to signals coming in and out.
After donning a hairnet, an apron, and tinted safety goggles, Matras leads me into a lab where I observe an extraordinary thing. Inside a wide, black box the size of a miniature television is an incredibly powerful laser. The technician turns it on. Nothing happens. Then Matras leans forward and opens a lens, focusing the laser beam.
There’s a high-pitched, very thunderous hum, like an electric motor whining. It’s the sound of air being torn apart. A very gaunt filament appears in the air, maybe half a centimeter across. It looks like a strand of spider silk, but it’s dazzling blue. It’s plasma—the fourth state of matter. Raise the size and power of the laser, and you can actually set a miniature part of the atmosphere on fire. Artificial lightning. Of course, my first question is what would happen if I stuck my hand in it. “Your hand would turn into plasma,” says another researcher, completely dispassionate. I put my hand back in my pocket.
Matras says these laser beams will be able to augment rainfall in three ways. First, acoustically—similar to the elderly concussion theory, the idea is that the sound of atoms being blown apart in the air can jolt neighboring raindrops into combining, growing larger, and falling to the ground. Second, convection—the beam will generate heat, generating updrafts that force the raindrops to mix. (This reminds me of an unfulfilled plan from the 1840s to make it rain by setting gigantic sections of the Appalachian Mountains on fire.) Third, ionization. When the beam is turned off, the plasma reforms—the nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules inside will recombine into random configurations, creating modern molecules around which the water will settle.