Word: queenslanders
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...good people of Toowoomba, Australia, a town of about 90,000 that sits atop the Great Dividing Range in southeast Queensland, have a branding problem on their hands. Residents of the nation's "Garden City" have not been able to use their sprinklers for nearly three years. Handheld hoses got the kibosh two years ago and, in 2006, watering the lawn by bucket was also banned...
...luck could end for Toowoomba and the rest of southeast Queensland. Last month a group of scientists in the area got one step closer to launching what could be the world's most advanced experiment in rainmaking - or, as it's known in weather circles, cloud seeding. That's the practice of injecting clouds, usually with silver iodide "seeds," salt or dry ice, to make the clouds' water or ice particles bigger and yield more rain. The technique has been used in different parts of the world for more than 60 years - with varying success. But the slow ramp...
...cloud seeding is back, especially in Australia. Energy company Snowy Hydro, for example, is trying to replenish dwindling snowfall in the not-so-Snowy Mountains in New South Wales. But what's special about the Queensland project, says Roelof Bruintjes, a cloud-seeding expert with the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, is that, for the first time, scientists will be able to take full advantage of a simple premise: some clouds are better for seeding than others. Up to now, the right weather-measuring tools have never been in the right program at the right time. Starting in November...
...Australia trial couldn't happen in a place that needs it more. Queensland's government has budgeted $7.6 million in public money into the four-year, multipartner experiment, part of a larger initiative to fight the crushing drought, including a desalination plant and a controversial program to recycle waste into drinking water. "We're in uncharted territory as far as rainfall goes," says Craig Wallace, the state's Natural Resources and Water Minister, who acknowledges that committing to cloud seeding - which still has its naysayers in the scientific community - may raise some eyebrows. "You'll always get skeptics...
...Whether or not the Toowoomba project brings rain, it is at least offering an oasis of hope for the people of southeast Queensland. Like the state, Toowoomba has explored several options to get more water to people, from tapping into natural underground aquifers to pumping water some 700 meters up the mountainside. Thorley estimates her city has invested 600 million Australian dollars in its water infrastructure, and thinks for the state to shell out $7.6 million on a cloud seeding experiment is a worthwhile risk. "If it proves to do something, then it has to have some benefit," she says...