rain

Cloud seeding is a geoengineering technique that involves using planes and cannons that shoot silver iodide into clouds, causing a reaction that makes storm clouds create 5 to 15 percent more precipitation.

Torrential storms soaked California and set off flooding across the state this weekend. The heavy rainfall was caused by one of the many atmospheric river events to hit the state this winter. Californians have seen hundreds of inches of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains and rain elsewhere in the state since January. Atmospheric rivers, long, narrow bands of moisture in the atmosphere that extend from the tropics, are responsible for most of the flood damage in the United States.

Alongside drought, famine, and climatic destabilization, you can add war to the list of potential (un)intended consequences of geoengineering, the Washington Post reports. As fossil-fueled climate changes continue to exacerbate drought, extreme heatwaves, and other disasters, so grows the incentive for governments to use geoengineering to block the sun or change rainfall patterns, despite the inevitable impacts outside their borders.

It is raining more intensely in most regions of the U.S. In places that once received lighter rainfall, more recent decades have brought moderate to heavy rainfall, especially in the central and eastern parts of the country.