Weather control

Whether hoping for snow on Christmas Day or for rain to water crops, people have wished that they could control the weather throughout history. Is it possible? And what if someone already is controlling the weather? Some believe that mysterious groups are using secret technology to control the skies whereas others think clever science could help manage big weather events and make disasters, such as lightning storms, less damaging.

Watering the clouds

Changing the weather is known as “weather modification” and it’s already taking place. The most popular modification technique is known as “cloud seeding”. This is where an aeroplane flies above the clouds and sprays a chemical – often silver iodide – onto them. This introduces tiny ice nuclei (particles on which crystals can grow) which encourages rain or snow to form.

One of the most famous uses of cloud seeding was during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Chinese government used it to trigger showers before they reached the capital, keeping the opening ceremony dry. It worked so well that it is still used before big public holidays to make sure the skies stay clear.

The United Arab Emirates invested £11 million in 2017 into projects to increase rainfall. With high temperatures, making it rain has become an important part of managing the country’s climate.

We covered weather in our Mysteries of Science podcast. Author Tamsin Mori told us about how she visited family in Shetland growing up and tried to summon fog to delay her flight home. “I used to write spells and leave them on the beach,” she said. Mori turned the idea into a book series called The Weather Weaver where clouds are characters and the weather has moods.

Unfortunately for Mori, some airports have used helium balloons carrying dry ice (a chemical that can be used to clear away fog) so aircraft can take off during bad weather.

Lightning rod

There are other ways people have tried to control the weather. Swiss-French physicist Jean-Pierre Wolf is investigating the possibility of using lasers to guide lightning to the ground, keeping it away from areas that could be damaged in a lightning strike.

New and experimental technology often leaves gaps in understanding which leaves room for people to fill those gaps with information they’ve imagined.

Conspiracy theorists believe that a research program known as HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is secretly controlling the weather. The group’s actual purpose is to study the ionosphere (the upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere). HAARP’s research takes place from about 40 miles above ground whereas most of the Earth’s weather systems take place in the troposphere (the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere) which extends up to about nine miles. “No one creates or steers hurricanes,” says the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the people in charge of monitoring climate and weather in the USA. “The technology does not exist.”

Our impact

Of course, humans are already changing the weather. Climate change, driven by greenhouse gases, makes extreme weather events more frequent and intense. We can’t zap away a storm with a secret ray but we are changing the atmosphere and continue to feel the effects of doing so.

Weather still surprises us. Meteorologist Kirsty McCabe from the Royal Meteorological Society says we’re always learning more. “We’ve got a really good understanding,” she says, “but there’s always room for improvement.”

Controlling the weather in a predictable way is still in its infancy. Sometimes we find even predicting the weather is tricky. Could future weather forecasts be plans rather than predictions? “We spend the whole time then checking what’s really happening against what the model predicted,” says McCabe. “Sometimes we’ll find out that what we thought we knew maybe wasn’t quite right. And that’s the whole point of being a scientist – you’re not done yet.”

Weather modification is real but has its limits. Humans can control the weather in small and specific ways but big, powerful changes such as stopping hurricanes are still out of reach. But that doesn’t mean the weather isn’t full of surprises. From exciting experiments to strange stories, the skies are home to more than just clouds.

Also

For centuries, people have reported seeing eerie spheres hovering above the ground. They’re not aliens but they might be ball lightning – one of the strangest weather types. Ball lightning happens during thunderstorms and is usually described as a glowing sphere that sometimes falls to the ground – fiery balls that some say can even move through walls.

We don’t understand everything about our weather. Meteorologist Kirsty McCabe says ball lightning is poorly understood. Scientists haven’t yet worked out why it happens but believe ball lightning could be as common as normal lightning strikes.

It might have something to do with the soil. Two researchers in New Zealand have suggested that it’s caused by lightning hitting silicon-rich soil. This may produce glowing particles that appear to hover above the ground and burn out after a short period of time.

With more people carrying phones in their pockets to capture weird weather like this, maybe one day we will be able to understand more.

First published in The Week Junior Science+Nature, issue 88, May 2025.