At the 13th World Meteorological Congress, it was noted that by 2025, two thirds of the world’s population will lack fresh water. Even in Russia, despite the presence of vast water resources in general, many agricultural regions belong to the zone of risky farming. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, more than 60% of the agricultural zone of Russia are areas with insufficient moisture.

  The Russian technology of artificial increase in precipitation is based on the results of many years of experiments in the Volga region, in Moldova and Cuba and pilot work on large areas in the Stavropol Territory, Western Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan (1986-1993), in Yakutia (1995- 2005).

  The use of this technology makes it possible to increase precipitation during the impact period by 1.5–2.0 times and add 10–30% to the seasonal precipitation layer in large areas.

  The scientific basis for artificial precipitation increase technologies is the hypothesis of using the dependence of the unstable state of clouds and cloud systems on the impact of external disturbances. When using the phase instability of a cloud, artificial crystallization zones are created in its supercooled part, which become centers of droplet formation and lead to an increase in precipitation falling from the cloud.

  The most promising systems for AW in summer are accumulations (clusters) of convective clouds, which are systems of united or located close to each other cloud cells, or multi-peak clouds occupying an area of up to 400–600 km2. In winter, the most promising are extensive systems of nimbostratus clouds of frontal origin. The effectiveness of the technology is achieved by identifying in each region a certain group of clouds suitable for impact, and strict adherence to the methodology for their seeding using special technical means of influence, which ensures the introduction of a reagent into a certain part of the cloud and leads to a positive effect.

 The technology is based on the aircraft method of seeding clouds with ice-forming reagents. The seeding of clouds that have reached a certain stage in their development, provided that the optimal concentration of ice-forming aerosol particles is ensured, leads to an increase in the thickness of the cloud, its horizontal dimensions, lifetime and, as a result, to an increase in the amount of precipitation that has fallen from it.

 The Agency has carried out three IMO projects:

1. IMO Demonstration Project in the Republic of Portugal. Read more…

2. Project to increase rainfall in the Republic of Cuba. Read more…

3. Pilot work on PPE in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Read more…

According to experts, the cost of 1 cubic meter of water obtained as a result of works on artificial precipitation increase in various projects is 0.1 — 0.5 €.