CLOUD Craft
An Architectural Proposal for Cloud Seeding & Weather Modification in the Future
By Michael Militello & Amar Shah
Preface Time . . . the healer of all wounds. But some scars prove too deep. Some paths too lost. Some intentions too dark. And what is left is a scattering of lost loves, faded dreams, and empty desires. Life is but a pinprick of blood in the ocean of humanity that flows throughout the ages - It ebbs and flows and rides the crests of time, rising with the dawn and setting with the dusk. Day after day. Sometimes there is no going back. Sometimes there is only the promise on the horizon . . .
CALIFORNIA DROUGHT As populated and metropolised as some parts of California are, the truth is, most of California is an arid semi-desert, with a climate similar to that of the North African Plain. About 65 percent of the state receives less than 20 inches of rainfall per year, most of that in the winter months. Droughts are a recurring feature of California’s climate, and the current four-year period starting from the fall of 2011 has been the driest in history since recordkeeping began in 1895. So much so that Governor Brown declared a statewide drought emergency in January 2014, establishing an interagency drought response team. California is in fact the world’s fifth-largest supplier of food. Most farming in California depends on irrigation, which usually accounts for about 80% of the state’s human water use. In 2014 growers lost about 6.6 million acrefeet of surface water and 2.2 billion dollars because of the drought. California, much like the rest of the planet, is in dire need of immediate rain and snowfall, long-term water conservation and storage strategies for the future, and responsible architectural designs that incorporate innovative technologies to help preserve the earth’s environment, before it is too late . . .
CLOUD SEEDING Even in areas with very low humidity, there’s at least some water in the sky and clouds. Clouds contain supercooled liquid water vapor. A rainstorm happens after moisture collects around naturally occurring particles in the air, causing the air to reach a level of saturation at which point it can no longer hold in that moisture. Cloud seeding essentially helps that process along, providing additional “nuclei” around which water condenses. These nuclei can be salts, dry ice, or silver iodide which are all effective because their crystalline structural forms are similar to that of ice. The water vapor molecules combine with the crystals to induce freezing nucleation, resulting in larger water droplets. Cloud seeding has been around for many decades and used throughout the world in various strategies. China used cloud seeding in Beijing just before the 2008 Olympic Games in order to clear the air of pollution. Farmers in the midwestern United States shoot flares of silver iodide out of planes to help spur rainfall in that region. It is more and more becoming a popular weather modification tool to help combat drought, famine, pollution, solar radiation, etc.
PLAYING GOD The concept of weather modification introduces issues of morality and ethics. Does altering the natural process of the earth for our own race’s betterment justify the consequences? Do we even understand the full repercussions some of these scientifiic methods have on the rest of the natural cycle of this planet? Do the inherent benefits of our sustained survvial justify us playing God? Where do we draw the line? And who is to say the natural human traits of greed, envy, and corruption will eventually outweigh the environmental benefitsas it most often has throughout history?
A STORY FORMS . . . In the summer of 2015, it was reported that despite Los Angeles residents rising to the challenge and reducing their water consumption by 10% more than expected during the four years of drought conditions, the LADWP still would raise utility rates and charge the average customer an additional $1.80 a month beginning in 2016 and $24 by 2020 because it was so short on revenue. The company explained that as revenues drop, utilities still have to cover fixed costs like employees wages, pipe & treatment facility maintenance, public outreach, and water-use restriction enforcement. Thus by conserving water usage, residents are actually incurring even more costs upon themselves since the utility companies are forced to raise prices in order to keep up revenue . . . We wanted to analyze the repurcussions of our future cloud seeding world and look at both the light and dark sides. We created a short fictional story complete with characters that would interact with our architectural creation and be affected by resultant weather modification in different ways.
“Cloud Towers� Sketches Architectural form was explored through intial sketching and brainstorming. The main idea was to combine the process of cloud seeding with an elevated method of distribution all within a habitable structure.
CLOUD CRAFT The architectural concept imagines a future earth where cloud seeding has become the standard process to modify and manipulate the weather. Cloud seeding can result in many positive environmental outcomes including temperature control, flooding prevention, decreasing pollution, dispersing fog, and deflecting solar radiation. But for the purposes of California, it is mainly used for irrigation and rainfall to combat droughts and famine. Towers are erected near the coast so as the lower marine layer clouds pass overhead, they can be seeded at different times and intervals, causing precipitation to occur in as little as 10 minutes. After years of practice, scientists have been able to pinpoint the exact amount and timing of release of chemical mixtures in order to manipulate the path of a cloud after seeding and predict where the rainfall will occur. Thus, rainfall is dispersed or “doled out� to cities and towns further inland that are suffering from drought. The towers themselves take on the aesthetics of a tree. Great limbs stretch to the sky, cloud farms grow like fungi off these limbs. The upper levels of the tower act as a self-sustaining community - the cloud seeders jettison the salt + iodide mixture into the air forcing the clouds to precipitate. The cable netting catches the rainfall and syphons it down to irrigate the farms. And the farms in turn provide food for the community. Residential flats line the cloud pythons, housing the farmers and workers of the tower.
3D modeling in Sketchup and Rhino. Rendered in 3DStudio Max
“THE BLIGHT�
New California, The Nomad
. . Dry cracked lips, parched throat, eyelids caked with dirt and dust. A blindingly bright and hazy sky brought a smoldering and suffocating heat. Sunlight beat down with an angry vengeance on a pale scorched landscape. A lone figure in ragged fatigues raised his head to the torched heavens and opened his mouth wide, a swollen tongue tasting the arid, still air. A normal day in New California - but the man knew better. A scant trace of moisture ever so faint hung upon the air. . a stillness before the storm. The nomad tore his eyes from the sky and focused on the horizon before him with new conviction. He re-shouldered the reins of his rusty cart and shuffled on down the path, over scarred earth and broken rock. It was almost time. A scratchy voice interrupted the nomad’s plodding. The radio on the cart had been blaring a repeated broadcast over the airwaves for the past 12 hours. A scheduled scattering in the nearby hills right here in the northwest province. The nomad thought he once had been able to recall the names of all provinces and districts in New California - but now it all blurred together in his mind like the shifting dunes of the desert. It was far - he estimated nearly 2 miles still. But there were no other options. Some of his cohorts from his camp had gotten desperate and tried to orchestrate a water raid on a delivery caravan earlier in the week. But it had not gone well. An hour later as the nomad crested the last dune, he gazed down upon a ruined cityscape; sandblasted buildings half-buried in the ground, dilapidated structures bent and broken, towers of long-past offices, city halls, schools, hospitals, once echoing a thriving city. Now an eternal waste. Sucked dry by the very earth it stood upon. The nomad noticed something else too. Hundreds of tiny figures ringed the outskirts of the basin - a quiet thirsty horde. A thick sticky tension rose through the air. A low murmur of thunder rolled across the sky overhead. The clouds parted . .
“BOTTLED UP”
Cloud Seeder Module, The Engineer
. . . High atop a control tower on the northeast cloud pylon, the Water Warden of Province 213 turned from a giant monitor and swiveled in his chair to stare out at the coast and distant mountains. A long day of monitoring salt extraction levels, analyzing weather patterns, and calculating water demand left the man with a splitting headache and a foul mood. Pylon 4 was scheduled to jettison a share of the salt and silver iodide solution within the next hour. But he knew it wasn’t enough. He had already run the analysis model several times over. Enough moisture would be formed to produce a small cumulonimbus. By the time it reached Province 213, perhaps some drops would fall. But nowhere near enough to appease the province’s population and its ever increasing demands.. The water warden sighed with an irritated frustration. He was up for election to the Department Board this year and he needed all the votes and support he could get. He refocused on the monumental weather data screen again. Several kilometers away from the tower’s location, the warden noticed a gathering of cumulus appearing to form over the South-Pacific. Simulation models predicted the path of the cloud to pass over the tower later that night, computed the addition of a specifically timed salt + iodide launch, and readjusted the new trajectory and timing of precipitation towards a district in the south. All it would take were a few keycodes and some swipes on the screen and the salt + iodide release could be rescheduled with a different jettison time and amount, causing the cloud to change course. Surely a small glitch wouldn’t affect things in the bigger picture? The warden needed time to think. He dug a set of keys from his pocket and opened the locked drawer of his desk. A refrigerated blast hit his face as he reached down and scooped out a bottle. A personal stash of cool, crisp, clean liquid. The water warden chugged the bottle, spilling a trickle of liquid down his chin and neck. The water leaked on the floor . . .
“RAINMAKER”
Cloud Seeder Module, The Engineer
. . . Pistons pumped, cogs whirled, machinery churned. Steam rose throughout the hot stuffy room. Neon lighting cast exaggerated shadows; darkening corners and illuminating vats of mixed liquids . . . Salt was syphoned up from the saltwater reservoirs at the base of the tower. The reservoirs trapped saltwater from the sea, and contained it for days while the water evaporated in the sun. It was then pumped up to the engineer’s room on this level. The salt was mixed with the silver iodide solution, strengthening the chemical compounds, increasing the chances for ice crystals to attach while in the cloud’s atmosphere. The heavier the ice crystals, the more likely to force precipitation in the cloud. It was then jettisoned into the sky as clouds passed overhead, using pressurized air within the seeder module pylons. It was a process that had evolved and been perfected for decades. Experimented with early on in the century, old nations like China had used cloud seeding to try to control weather patterns and redirect rainfall. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, rockets were used to coax rain showers out of clouds before they reached the Olympic city so that there would be no rain during the opening and closing ceremonies. The engineer stood, transfixed by the whirlpool of chemicals. A loud warbling broke his concentration - a message from the control room. He looked down at his mobile screen and was shocked to read a change in the orders. The jettison was to be delayed? And the mixture formula to be adjusted? The break in routine combined with the last minute nature of the message drew a suspicious frown from the engineer. He hesitated but eventually shut down the mixing process. It wasn’t until several hours later when crystal particles shot out into the night sky. . .
“PARADISE LOST?”
Level 98 Concourse Market, The Cloud Farmer
. . . Wind whipped through air, slicing and carving through the tower’s upper reaches. Thunder rent the sky, rain splattered the ground . . . The cloud farmer turned from his plot of land and traversed along the concourse of Level 98. The concourse ran in a circular fashion, orbiting around the cloud pylons and overlooking the center of the cloud forest. A lightweight web of cable netting hung overhead but sagged low from the weight of newly-caught rainwater from the cloudstorm. Over time the water would be drained and syphoned down to the floating farm islands that grew off the cloud pylon like fungi on metal trees. The system had been in place for years. The upper levels of the tower acted as a self-sustaining community - the cloud seeders jettisoned the salt + iodide mixture into the air forcing the clouds to precipitate. The cable netting caught the rainfall and syphoned it down to irrigate the farms. And the farms in turned provided food for the community, who were housed in residential flats lining the cloud pythons. Today there was a farmer’s market on Level 98 where the community could share their crops and food with one another. But today the farmer was not going to the market. He bypassed the crowd and made his way to a people-mover that led to some of the lower levels. He continued on past the engineering levels, the salt extractors & the silver iodide chambers. These were not of his concern today. He arrived on the ground floor via a hyper-lift and ducked out a back door to the elements outside. Glaring white light blinded and disoriented the farmer for a moment, but he gathered himself, determined to complete his task. Squinting against a storm-torn blight, the farmer scanned the barren horizon, searching for any kind of movement. After a time a lone figure, wrapped in cloth from head to toe, seemed to materialize from the waste and approached the farmer hesitantly. It was a contact from one of the nomadic camps in the outlying area of the tower. The farmer reached into his bag and pulled out some fresh fruit from his farm. And a jug of fresh rainwater. He handed it over to the outstretched hands of the stranger. The figure muttered a thanks, and vanished into the thick dust just as quickly as he had emerged. The farmer wore a sad smile; a humble act with a bittersweet feeling. . . . Back on the upper levels some cloud cover was dissipating overhead. Thick green grass on the farm islands swayed in the light breeze, a remnant of the scattering storm. A soft waterfall trickled off somewhere beyond. Golden sunlight streamed down and danced off droplets of dew. A picture of paradise . . .