FIRST QUEENSLAND CLOUD-SEEDING AIRCRAFT TO TAKE OFF LATER THIS YEAR

The first aircraft will be flying by the end of this year in the Beattie Government’s four-year cloud seeding project, Natural Resources and Water Minister Craig Wallace said today.

Mr Wallace said the aircraft would do research and initial cloud seeding from November onwards to coincide with the wetter spring/summer season in south east Queensland.

However, project advisor Professor Roger Stone, of the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, said while aircraft would do initial cloud seeding they also would investigate local weather systems and cloud microphysics.

The $7.6 million research project is being managed by the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence, which was established by the Beattie Government to provide scientific information and policy advice on climate change.

“In the worst drought on record we are looking at all methods to secure new water supplies, including drilling for groundwater, purified recycled water, desalination and cloud seeding,” Mr Wallace said.

“Cloud seeding is science fact not science fiction,” he said.

“We know that it works but only in specific circumstances and we have to see if the right circumstances exist in SEQ,” he said.

Professor Stone said: “We will use the first year to investigate where and how we do it.

“We don’t just fly around and throw seeding material out,” he said.

“In some previous projects, the science has been good but they have been let down by the implementation – we don’t want that to happen here.”

Craig Wallace and Professor Stone outlined the project in State Parliament today to keep the community up to date with the project’s progress.

The Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence is co-ordinating the project’s Scientific Advisory Group, which has experts from the Department of Natural Resources and Water, the Bureau of Meteorology, Monash University and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (USA).

The cloud seeding research project aims to enhance rainfall over SEQ dam catchments, including Somerset Dam and Wivenhoe Dam.

One of the techniques to be used, glaciogenic cloud seeding, works by adding particles such as silver iodide crystals to supercooled water present in clouds.

Ice accumulates, snowflakes form and then melt to form rain drops.

Cloud seeding in SEQ will be done using material including silver iodide particles and salt.

A tissue box would contain enough silver iodide for a year of cloud seeding.

Mr Wallace said the Natural Resources and Water project team was currently negotiating to get suitable cloud seeding aircraft for cloud seeding operations and cloud seeding research.

A CP2 Doppler radar recently installed by the Bureau of Meteorology at Redbank Plains near Ipswich will improve the project’s ability to study cloud microphysics and details of any rainfall.

Cloud seeding has been experimented with in various locations in Australia and around the world since the 1940s.

It is currently used in southern parts of Australia to enhance water supplies for hydro-electric power generation.

In the past 10 years there has been increasing interest in “warm cloud” seeding, which seeds clouds that have much warmer upper temperatures than previously used in more southern latitudes in Australia.

Media inquiries: Paul Childs, Craig Wallace’s office, on 0407 131 654.